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NO NAME 


H IRovel 


BY 

WILKIE COLLINS 

* 

AUTHOR OF 

POOR MISS FINCH” “ANTONINA” “ THE MOONSTONE” “BASIL' 
“THE DEAD secret” “armadale” ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 



HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
HARPER & BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 


/rv & 


/ 


/ 



I CAN TWIST ANY MAN ALIVE AROUND MY FINGER!” 


[see p. 256 .] 





















































































































TO 

FRANCIS CARR BEARD, 

(FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF ENGLAND), 
IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE TIME WHEN 


THE CLOSING SCENES OF THIS STORY WERE WRITTEN. 





































































- 



































P E E F A C E. 


The main purpose of this story is to appeal to the reader’s 
interest in a subject which has been the theme of some of 
the greatest writers, living and dead — but which has never 
been, and can never be, exhausted, because it is a subject 
eternally interesting to all mankind. Here is one more book 
that depicts the struggle of a human creature, under those 
opposing influences of Good and Evil, which we have all felt, 
which we have all known. It has been my aim to make the 
character of “ Magdalen,” which personifies this struggle, a 
pathetic character even in its perversity and its error; and 
I have tried hard to attain this result by the least obtrusive 
and the least artificial of all means — by a resolute adherence 
throughout to the truth as it is in Nature. This design was 
no easy one to accomplish ; and it has been a great encour- 
agement to me (during the publication of my story in its pe- 
riodical form) to know, on the authority of many readers, that 
the object which I had proposed to myself, I might, in some 
degree, consider as an object achieved. 

Round the central figure in the narrative other characters 
will be found grouped, in sharp contrast — contrast, for the 
most part, in which I have endeavored to make the element 
of humor mainly predominant. I have sought to impart this 
relief to the more serious passages in the book, not only be- 
cause I believed myself to be justified in doing so by the 
laws of Art — but because experience has taught me (what 
the experience of my readers will doubtless confirm) that 
there is no such moral phenomenon as unmixed tragedy to 
be found in the world around us. Look where we may, the 
dark threads and the light cross each other perpetually in 
the texture of human life. 

To pass from the Characters to the Story, it will be seen 


10 


PKEFACE. 


that the narrative related in these pages has been construct- 
ed on a plan which differs from the plan followed in my last 
novel, and in some other of my works published at an earlier 
date. The only Secret contained in this book is revealed 
midway in the first volume. From that point, all the main 
events of the story are purposely foreshadowed, before they 
take place — my present design being to rouse the reader’s 
interest in following the train of circumstances by which 
these foreseen events are brought about. In trying this 
new ground, I am not turning my back in doubt on the 
ground which I have passed over already. My one object 
in following a new course, is to enlarge the range of my 
studies in the art of writing fiction, and to vary the form in 
which I make my appeal to the reader, as attractively as I 
can. 

There is no need for me to add more to these few prefatory 
words than is here written. What I might otherwise have 
wished to say in this place, I have endeavored to make the 
book itself say for me. 


NO NAME. 


THE FIRST SCENE. 

COMBE-RAVEN, SOMERSETSHIRE. 


CHAPTER I. 

The hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morn- 
ing. The house was a country residence in West Somersetshire, 
called Combe-Raven. The day was the fourth of March, and the 
year was eighteen hundred and forty-six. 

No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish 
snoring of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room 
door, disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and stair- 
case. Who were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let 
the house reveal its own secrets ; and, one by one, as they descend 
the stairs from their beds, let the sleepers disclose themselves. 

As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and 
shook himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was ac- 
customed to let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from one 
closed door to another on the ground-floor ; and, returning to his 
mat in great perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family, with a long 
and melancholy howl. 

Before the last notes of the dog’s remonstrance had died away, 
the oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under 
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the fe- 
male servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl over 
her shoulders — for the March morning was bleak ; and rheumatism 
and the cook were old acquaintances. 

Receiving the dog’s first cordial advances with the worst possible 
grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the animal out. 
It was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and behind a black 
plantation of firs, the rising sun rent its way upward through piles 
of ragged gray cloud ; heavy drops of rain fell few and far between ; 
the March wind shuddered round the corners of the house, and the 
wet trees swayed wearily. 



12 


NO NAME. 


Seven o’clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to 
show themselves in more rapid succession. 

The house-maid came down — tall and slim, with the state of the 
spring temperature written redly on her nose. The lady’s-maid fol- 
lowed — young, smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid came 
next— afflicted with the face-ache, and making no secret of her suf- 
ferings. Last of all, the footman appeared, yawning disconsolately ; 
the living picture of a man who felt that he had been defrauded of 
his fair night’s rest. 

The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the 
slowly lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event, and 
turned at starting on this question : Had Thomas, the footman, 
seen any thing of the concert at Clifton, at which his master and 
the two young ladies had been present on the previous night? 
Yes ; Thomas had heard the concert ; he had been paid for to go 
in at the back; it was a loud concert; it was a hot concert; it was 
described at the top of the bills as Grand ; whether it was worth 
traveling sixteen miles to hear by railway, with the additional hard- 
ship of going back nineteen miles by road, at half-past one in the 
morning — was a question which he would leave his master and the 
young ladies to decide ; his own opinion, in the mean time, being 
unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part of all the female 
servants in succession, elicited no additional information of any sort. 
Thomas could hum none of the songs, and could describe none of 
the ladies’ dresses. His audience, accordingly, gave him up in de- 
spair; and the kitchen small -talk flowed back into its ordinary 
channels, until the clock struck eight, and startled the assembled 
servants into separating for their morning’s work. 

A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half- past — and 
more signs of life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next 
member of the family who came down stairs was Mr. Andrew Van- 
stone, the master of the house. 

Tall, stout, and upright — with bright blue eyes, and healthy florid 
complexion — his brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly buttoned 
awry ; his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking unrebuked at his 
heels; one hand thrust into his waistcoat pocket, and the other 
smacking the banisters cheerfully as he came down stairs humming 
a tune — Mr. Vanstone showed his character on the surface of him 
freely to all men. An easy, hearty, handsome, good-humored gen- 
tleman, who walked on the sunny side of the way of life, and who 
asked nothing better than to meet all his fellow-passengers in this 
world on the sunny side, too. Estimating him by years, he had 
turned fifty. Judging him by lightness of heart, strength of con- 
stitution, and capacity for enjoyment, he was no older than most 
men who have only turned thirty. 


NO NAME. 


13 


“ Thomas !” cried Mr. Yanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his 
thick walking-stick from the hall table. u Breakfast, this morning, 
at ten. The young ladies are not likely to be down earlier after 
the concert last night. — By-the-bye, how did you like the concert 
yourself, eh? You thought it was grand? Quite right; so it was. 
Nothing but crash-bang, varied now and then by bang-crash ; all 
the women dressed within an inch of their lives ; smothering heat, 
blazing gas, and no room for any body — yes, yes, Thomas ; grand’s 
the word for it, and comfortable isn’t.” With that expression of 
opinion, Mr. Yanstone whistled to his vixenish terrier ; flourished 
his stick at the hall door in cheerful defiance of the rain; and set 
off through wind and weather for his morning walk. 

The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock, 
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family ap- 
peared on the stairs — Miss Garth, the governess. 

No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without see- 
ing at once that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard-featured 
face ; her masculine readiness and decision of movement ; her obsti- 
nate honesty of look and manner, all proclaimed her border birth 
and border training. Though little more than forty years of age, 
her hair was quite gray ; and she wore over it the plain cap of an 
old woman. Neither hair nor head-dress was out of harmony with 
her face — it looked older than her years : the hard handwriting of 
trouble had scored it heavily at some past time. The self-possession 
of her progress down stairs, and the air of habitual authority with 
which she looked about her, spoke well for her position in Mr. Yan- 
stone’s family. This was evidently not one of the forlorn, perse- 
cuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here was a woman 
who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her employers 
— a woman who looked capable of sending any parents in England 
to the right-about, if they failed to rate her at her proper value. 

“ Breakfast at ten ?” repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had 
answered the bell, and had mentioned his master’s orders. “ Ha ! I 
thought what would come of that concert last night. When people 
who live in the country patronize public amusements, public amuse- 
ments return the compliment by upsetting the family afterward for 
days together. You're upset, Thomas, I can see — your eyes are as 
red as a ferret’s, and your cravat looks as if you had slept in it. 
Bring the kettle at a quarter to ten — and if you don’t get better in 
the course of the day, come to me, and I’ll give you a dose of physic. 
That’s a well-meaning lad, if you only let him alone,” continued 
Miss Garth, in soliloquy, when Thomas had retired ; “ but he’s not 
strong enough for concerts twenty miles off. They wanted me to 
go with them last night. Yes : catch me !” 

Nine o’clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty 


14 


NO NAME. 


minutes past the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on the 
stairs. At the end of that time, two ladies appeared, descending to 
the breakfast-room together— Mrs. Yanstone and her eldest daughter. 

If the personal attractions of Mrs. Yanstone, at an earlier period 
of life, had depended solely on her native English charms of com- 
plexion and freshness, she must have long since lost the last relics 
of her fairer self. But her beauty as a young woman had passed 
beyond the average national limits ; and she still preserved the ad- 
vantage of her more exceptional personal gifts. Although she was 
now in her forty-fourth year ; although she had been tried, in by- 
gone times, by the premature loss of more than one of her children, 
and by long attacks of illness which had followed those bereave- 
ments of former years— she still preserved the fair proportion and 
subtle delicacy of feature, once associated with the all-adorning 
brightness and freshness of beauty, which had left her never to re- 
turn. Her eldest child, now descending the stairs by her side, was 
the mirror in which she could look back, and see again the reflec- 
tion of her own youth. There, folded thick on the daughter’s head, 
lay the massive dark hair, which, on the mother’s, was fast turning 
gray. There, in the daughter’s cheek, glowed the lovely dusky red 
which had faded from the mother’s to bloom again no more. Miss 
Yanstone had already reached the first maturity of womanhood ; 
she had completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark 
majestic character of her mother’s beauty, she had yet hardly inher- 
ited all its charms. Though the shape of her face was the same, the 
features were scarcely so delicate, their proportion was scarcely so 
true. She was not so tall. She had the dark-brown eyes of her 
mother — full and soft, with the steady lustre in them which Mrs. 
Yanstone’s eyes had lost — and yet there was less interest, less refine- 
ment and depth of feeling in her expression : it was gentle and 
feminine, but clouded by a certain quiet reserve, from which her 
mother’s face was free. If we dare to look closely enough, may we 
not observe that the moral force of character and the higher intel- 
lectual capacities, in parents seem often to wear out mysteriously in 
the course of transmission to children ? In these days of insidious 
nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous malady, is it not 
possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely than we are will- 
ing to admit, to the bodily gifts as well ? 

The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together— 
the first dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over 
her shoulders ; the second more simply attired in black, with a plain 
collar and cuffs, and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the bosom 
of her dress. As they crossed the hall and entered the breakfast- 
room, Miss Yanstone was full of the all-absorbing subject of the last 
night’s concert. 


NO NAME. 


15 


“ I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us,” she said. “ You 
have been so strong and so well ever since last summer — you have 
felt so many years younger, as you said yourself — that I am sure 
the exertion would not have been too much for you.” 

“ Perhaps not, my love — but it was as well to keep on the safe 
side.” 

I “ Quite as well,” remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the breakfast- 
room door. u Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear) — look, I say, 
at Norah. A perfect wreck; a living proof of your wisdom and 
mine in staying at home. The vile gas, the foul air, the late hours 
— what can you expect ? She’s not made of iron, and she suffers ac- 
cordingly. No, my dear, you needn’t deny it. I see you’ve got a 
headache.” 

Norah’s dark, handsome face brightened into a smile — then light- 
ly clouded again w T ith its accustomed quiet reserve. 

“ A very little headache ; not half enough to make me regret the 
concert,” she said, and walked away by herself to the window. 

On the far side of a garden and paddock, the view overlooked a 
stream, some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of 
a wooded, rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which here 
wieft its way through the hills that closed the prospect. A winding 
strip of road was visible, at no great distance, amidst the undulations 
of the open ground ; and along this strip the stalwart figure of Mr. 
Vanstone was now easily recognizable, returning to the house from 
his morning walk. He flourished his stick gayly, as he observed his 
eldest daughter at the window. She nodded and waved her hand 
in return, very gracefully and prettily — but with something of old- 
fashioned formality in her manner, which looked strangely in so 
young a woman, and which seemed out of harmony with a saluta- 
tion addressed to her father. 

The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the 
minute-hand had recorded the lapse of five minutes more, a door 
banged in the bedroom regions — a clear young voice was heard 
singing blithely — light, rapid footsteps pattered on the upper stairs, 
descended with a jump to the landing, and pattered again, faster 
than ever, down the lower flight. In another moment, the youngest 
of Mr. Yanstone’s two daughters (and two only surviving children) 
dashed into view on the dingy old oaken stairs, with the sudden- 
ness of a flash of light ; and clearing the last three steps into the 
hall at a jump, presented herself breathless in the breakfast-room, to 
make the family circle complete. 

By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves 
still unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Yanstone’s children presented 
no recognizable resemblance to either of her parents. How had she 


16 


NO NAME. 


come by her hair ? how had she come by her eyes ? Even her father 
and mother had asked themselves those questions, as she grew up to 
girlhood, and had been sorely perplexed to answer them. Her hair 
was of that purely light-brown hue, unmixed with flaxen, or yellow, 
or red — which is oftener seen on the plumage of a bird than on the 
head of a human being. It was soft and plentiful, and waved down- 
ward from her low forehead in regular folds — but, to some tastes, it 
was dull and dead, in its absolute want of glossiness, in its monoto- ' 
nous purity of plain light color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were 
just a shade darker than her hair, and seemed made expressly for 
those violet-blue eyes, which assert their most irresistible charm 
when associated with a fair complexion. But it was here exactly 
that the promise of her face failed of performance in the most star- 
tling manner. The eyes, which should have been dark, were incom- 
prehensibly and discordantly light ; they were of that nearly color- 
less gray which, though little attractive in itself, possesses the rare 
compensating merit of interpreting the finest gradations of thought, 
the gentlest changes of feeling, the deepest trouble of passion, with 
a subtle transparency of expression which no darker eyes can rival. 
Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper part of her face, she 
was hardly less at variance with established ideas of harmony in the 
lower. Her lips had the true feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks 
the lovely roundness and smoothness of youth — but the mouth was 
too large and firm, the chin too square and massive for her sex and 
age. Her complexion partook of the pure monotony of tint which 
characterized her hair — it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fair- 
ness all over, without a tinge of color in the cheeks, except on oc- 
casions of unusual bodily exertion, or sudden mental disturbance. 
The whole countenance — so remarkable in its strongly opposed 
characteristics — was rendered additionally striking by its extraor- 
dinary mobility. The large, electric, light-gray eyes were hardly 
ever in repose ; all varieties of expression followed each other over 
the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity which left so- 
ber analysis far behind in the race. The girl’s exuberant vitality 
asserted itself all over her, from head to foot. Her figure — taller 
than her sister’s, taller than the average of woman’s height ; instinct 
with such a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playful' 
ly graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the move- 
ments of a young cat — her figure was so perfectly developed already 
that no one who saw her could have supposed that she was only 
eighteen. She bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty years 
or more — bloomed naturally and irresistibly, in right of her match- 
less health and strength. Here, in truth, lay the mainspring of this 
strangely - constituted organization. Her headlong course down 
the house stairs ; the brisk activity of all her movements ; the in- 


NO NAME. 


17 


cessant sparkle of expression in her face ; the enticing gayety which 
took the hearts of the quietest people by storm — even the reckless 
delight in bright colors which showed itself in her brilliantly-striped 
morning dress, in her fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes 
on her smart little shoes — all sprang alike from the same source ; 
from the overflowing physical health which strengthened every 
muscle, braced every nerve, and set the warm young blood tingling 
through her veins, like the blood of a growing child. 

On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the 
customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctu- 
ality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household au- 
thorities. In Miss Garth’s favorite phrase, “Magdalen was born 
with all the senses — except a sense of order.” 

Magdalen ! It was a strange name to have given her ? Strange, 
indeed; and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. 
The name had been borne by one of Mr. Vanstone’s sisters, who 
had died in early youth ; and, in affectionate remembrance of her, 
he had called his second daughter by it — just as he had called his 
eldest daughter Norah, for his wife’s sake. Magdalen ! Surely, 
the grand old Bible name — suggestive of a sad and sombre digni- 
ty ; recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence 
and seclusion — had been here, as events had turned out, inappro- 
priately bestowed? Surely, this self - contradictory girl had per- 
versely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a 
character which was out of all harmony with her own Christian 
name ! 

“ Late again !” said Mrs. Yanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kiss- 
ed her. 

“ Late again !” chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her 
way next. “Well?” she went on, taking the girl’s chin familiarly 
in her hand, with a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed 
that the youngest daughter, with all her faults, was the governess’s 
favorite — “Well? and what has the concert done for you? What 
form of suffering has dissipation inflicted on your system this morn' 
ing ?” 

“ Suffering !” repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the 
use of her tongue with it. “I don’t know the meaning of the word : 
if there’s any thing the matter with me, I’m too well. Suffering ! 
I’m ready for another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and 
a play the day after. Oh,” cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair 
and crossing her hands rapturously on the table, “ how I do like 
pleasure !” 

“ Come ! that’s explicit at any rate,” said Miss Garth. “ I think 
Pope must have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines: 


18 


NO NAME. 


“ ‘ Men some to business, some to pleasure take, 

But every woman is at heart a rake.’ ” 

“ The deuce she is !” cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while 
Miss Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. 
u Well ; live and learn. If you’re all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes 
are turned topsy-turvy with a vengeance ; and the men will have 
nothing left for it but to stop at home and darn the stockings. — 
Let’s have some breakfast.” 

“How-d’ye-do, papa?” said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as 
boisterously round the neck, as if he belonged to some larger order 
of Newfoundland dog, and was made to be romped with at his 
daughter’s convenience. u I’m the rake Miss Garth means ; and I 
want to go to another concert — or a play, if you like — or a ball, if 
you prefer it — or any thing else in the way of amusement that puts 
me into a new dress, and plunges me into a crowd of people, and 
illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me in a tingle of ex- 
citement all over, from head to foot. Any thing will do, as long as 
it doesn’t send us to bed at eleven o’clock.” 

Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter’s flow of 
language, like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from 
that quarter. “ If I am to be allowed my choice of amusements 
next time,” said the worthy gentleman, “ I think a play will suit 
me better than a concert. The girls enjoyed themselves amazingly, 
my dear,” he continued, addressing his wife. “ More than I did, I 
must say. It was altogether above my mark. They played one 
piece of music which lasted forty minutes. It stopped three times, 
by-the-way ; and we all thought it was done each time, and clap- 
ped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on it went again, to our 
great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair, and all 
wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear ! when we had crash- 
bang for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way, what did 
they call it ?” 

“ A symphony, papa,” replied Norah. 

“ Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven !” 
added Magdalen. “ How can you say you were not amused ? Have 
you forgotten the yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpro- 
nounceable name ? Don’t you remember the faces she made when 
she sang ? and the way she courtesied and courtesied, till she cheat- 
ed the foolish people into crying encore ? Look here, mamma — 
look here, Miss Garth !” 

She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a 
sheet of music, held it before her in the established concert-room 
position, and produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer’s gri- 
maces and courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the orig- 
inal, that her father roared with laughter; and even the footman 


NO NAME. 


19 


(who came in at that moment with the post-bag) rusheft out of the 
room again, and committed the indecorum of echoing his master 
audibly on the other side of the door. 

“ Letters, papa. I want the key,” said Magdalen, passing from 
the imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the side- 
board, with the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions. 

Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though 
his youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was 
easy to see where Magdalen’s unmethodical habits came from. 

“ I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other 
keys,” said Mr. Vanstone. “ Go and look for it, my dear.” 

“You really should check Magdalen,” pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, 
addressing her husband, when her daughter had left the room. 
“ Those habits of mimicry are growing on her ; and she speaks to 
you with a levity which it is positively shocking to hear.” 

“Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,” 
remarked Miss Garth. “ She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a 
kind of younger brother of hers.” 

“You are kind to us in every thing else, papa; and you make 
kind allowances for Magdalen’s high spirits — don’t you ?” said the 
quiet Norah, taking her father’s part and her sister’s, with so little 
show of resolution on the surface, that few observers would have 
been sharp enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it. 

“ Thank you, my dear,” said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. “ Thank 
you, for a very pretty speech. As for Magdalen,” he continued, ad- 
dressing his wife and Miss Garth, “ she’s an unbroken filly. Let her 
caper and kick in the paddock to her heart’s content. Time enough 
to break her to harness, when she gets a little older.” 

The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She un- 
locked the post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in 
a heap. Sorting them gayly in less than a minute, she approached 
the breakfast-table with both hands full ; and delivered the letters 
all round with the business-like rapidity of a London postman. 

“Two for Norah,” she announced, beginning with her sister. 
w Three for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the 
other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering 
letters, don’t you ?” pursued Magdalen, dropping the postman’s 
character, and assuming the daughter’s. “ How you will grumble 
and fidget in the study ! and how you will wish there were no such 
things as letters in the world ! and how red your nice old bald 
head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers ; and 
how many of the answers you will leave until to-morrow after all ! 
The Bristol Theatre's open , papa” she whispered, slyly and suddenly, 
in her father’s ear ; “ I saw it in the newspaper when I went to the 
library to get the key. Let’s go to-morrow night !” 


20 


NO NAME. 


While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanical 
ly sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession, 
and looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth, 
his attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, sud- 
denly became fixed on the post-mark of the letter. 

Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen 
could see the post -mark as plainly as her father saw it — New Ob 
leans. 

“An American letter, papa!” she said. “Who do you know at 
New Orleans ?” 

Mrs. Yanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband, the 
moment Magdalen spoke those words. 

Mr. Yanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter’s 
arm from his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption. 
She returned,' accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table. Her 
father, with the letter in his hand, waited a little before he opened 
it ; her mother looking at him, the while, with an eager, expectant 
attention, which attracted Miss Garth’s notice, and Norah’s, as well 
as Magdalen’s. 

After a minute or more of hesitation, Mr. Yanstone opened the 
letter. 

His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his 
cheeks fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been 
ashy paleness in a less florid man; and his expression becoming 
saddened and overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen, 
watching anxiously, saw nothing but the change that passed over 
their father. Miss Garth alone observed the effect which that 
change produced on the attentive mistress of the house. 

It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have antici- 
pated. Mrs. Yanstone looked excited rather than alarmed, A faint 
flush rose on her cheeks— her eyes brightened— she stirred the tea 
round and round in her cup in a restless, impatient manner which 
was not natural to her. 

Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the first 
to break the silence. 

“ What is the matter, papa ?” she asked. 

“ Nothing,” said Mr. Yanstone, sharply, without looking up at her. 

“ I’m sure there must be something,” persisted Magdalen. “ I’m 
sure there is bad news, papa, in that American letter.” 

“ There is nothing in the letter that concerns you” said Mr. Yan- 
stone. 

It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received 
from her father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, 
which would have been irresistibly absurd under less serious cfr' 
cumstances. 


NO NAME. 


21 


Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their 
lives, the family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence. 
Mr. Yanstone’s hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning 
spirits, was gone. He absently broke off some morsels of dry toast 
from the rack near him, absently finished his first cup of tea — then 
asked for a second, which he left before him untouched. 

“ Norah,” he said, after an interval, “ you needn’t wait for me. 
Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.” 

His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately 
followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert 
himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has 
its effect ; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law. 

“ What can have happened ?” whispered Norah, as they closed 
the breakfast-room door, and crossed the hall. 

“What does papa mean by being cross with Me?” exclaimed 
Magdalen, chafing under a sense of her own injuries. 

“ May I ask what right you had to pry into your father’s private 
affairs ?” retorted Miss Garth. 

“Right?” repeated Magdalen. “I have no secrets from papa — 
what business has papa to have secrets from me ! I consider my- 
self insulted.” 

“If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding 
your own business,” said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, “ you would 
be a trifle nearer the truth. Ah ! you are like all the rest of the 
girls in the present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows which 
end of her’s uppermost.” 

The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen ac- 
knowledged Miss Garth’s reproof by banging the door. 

Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Yanstone nor his wife left 
the breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened, 
went in to clear the table — found his master and mistress seated 
close together in deep consultation — and immediately went out 
again. Another quarter of an hour elapsed before the breakfast- 
room door was opened, and the private conference of the husband 
and wife came to an end. 

“ I hear mamma in the hall,” said Norah. “ Perhaps she is com- 
ing to tell us something.” 

Mrs. Yanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. 
The color was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half- 
dried tears glistened in her eyes ; her step was more hasty, all her 
movements were quicker than usual. 

“ I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you,” she said, ad- 
dressing her daughters. “ Your father and I are going to London 
to-morrow.” 

Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonish- 


22 


NO NAME. 


ment. Miss Garth dropped her work on her lap ; even the sedah 
Norah started to her feet, and amazedly repeated the words, “ Going 
to London !” 

“ Without us ?” added Magdalen. 

“Your father and I are going alone,” said Mrs. Vanstone. “Per- 
haps, for as long as three weeks — but not longer. We are go- 
ing ” — she hesitated — “ we are going on important family business. 
Don’t hold me, Magdalen. This is a sudden necessity — I have a 
great deal to do to-day — many things to set in order before to-mor- 
row. There, there, my love, let me go.” 

She drew her arm away ; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on 
the forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen 
saw that her mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answer- 
ing any more questions. 

The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Yanstone. 
With the reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in 
defiance of Miss Garth’s prohibition and her sister’s remonstrances, 
determined to go to the study, and look for her father thpre. When 
she tried the door, it was locked on the inside. She said, “ It’s only 
me, papa and waited for the answer. “ I’m busy now, my dear,” 
was the answer. “ Don’t disturb me.” 

Mrs. Yanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She re- 
mained in her own room, with the female servants about her, im- 
mersed in endless preparations for the approaching departure. The 
servants, little used in that family to sudden resolutions and unex- 
pected orders, were awkward and confused in obeying directions. 
They ran from room to room unnecessarily, and lost time and pa- 
tience in jostling each other on the stairs. If a stranger had enter- 
ed the house that day, he might have imagined that an unexpected 
disaster had happened in it, instead of an unexpected necessity for 
a journey to London. Nothing proceeded in its ordinary routine. 
Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the morning at the piano, 
wandered restlessly about the staircases and passages, and in and 
out of doors when there were glimpses of fine weather. Norah, 
whose fondness for reading had passed into a family proverb, took 
up book after book from table and shelf, and laid them down again, 
in despair of fixing her attention. Even Miss Garth felt the all-per- 
vading influence of the household disorganization, and sat alone by 
the morning-room fire, with her head shaking ominously, and her 
work laid aside. 

“ Family affairs ?” thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs. Yan- 
stone’s vague explanatory words. “I have lived twelve years at 
Combe-Raven ; and these are the first family affairs which have got 
between the parents and the children, in all my experience. What 
does it mean ? Change ? I suppose I’m getting old. I don’t like 
change.” 


NO NAME. 


23 


CHAPTER n. 

At ten o’clock the next morning, Norah and Magdalen stood 
alone in the hall at Combe-Raven, watching the departure of the 
carriage which took their father and mother to the London train. 

Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some ex- 
planation of that mysterious “ family business ” to which Mrs. Van- 
stone had so briefly alluded on the previous day. No such expla- 
nation had been offered. Even the agitation of the leave-taking, 
under circumstances entirely new in the home experience of the 
parents and children, had not shaken the resolute discretion of Mr. 
and Mrs. Vanstone. They had gone — with the warmest testimonies 
of affection, with farewell embraces fervently reiterated again and 
again — but without dropping one word, from first to last, of the na- 
ture of their errand. 

As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at 
a turn in the road, the sisters looked one another in the face ; each 
feeling, and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense that 
she was openly excluded, for the first time, from the confidence of 
her parents. Norah’s customary reserve strengthened into sullen 
silence — she sat down in one of the hall chairs, and looked out 
frowningly through the open house door. Magdalen, as usual 
when her temper was ruffled, expressed her dissatisfaction in the 
plainest terms. “I don’t care who knows it — I think we are both 
of us shamefully ill-used !” With those words, the young lady fol- 
lowed her sister’s example, by seating herself on a hall chair, and 
looking aimlessly out through the open house door. 

Almost at the same moment, Miss Garth entered the hall from the 
morning-room. Her quick observation showed her the necessity for 
interfering to some practical purpose ; and her ready good sense at 
once pointed the way. 

“ Look up, both of you, if you please, and listen to me,” said Miss 
Garth. “ If we are all three to be comfortable and happy together, 
now we are alone, we must stick to our usual habits and go on in 
our regular way. There is the state of things in plain words. Ac- 
cept the situation — as the French say. Here am I to set you the 
example. I have just ordered an excellent dinner at the customary 
hour. I am going to the medicine-chest next, to physic the kitchen- 
maid — an unwholesome girl, whose face-ache is all stomach. In the 
mean time, Norah, my dear, you will find your work and your books, 


24 


NO NAME. 


as usual, in the library. Magdalen, suppose you leave off tying your 
handkerchief into knots, and use your fingers on the keys of the 
piano instead? We’ll lunch at one, and take the dogs out after- 
ward. Be as brisk and cheerful both of you as I am. Come, rouse 
up directly. If I see those gloomy faces any longer, as sure as my 
name’s Garth, I’ll give your mother written warning, and go back to 
my friends by the mixed train at twelve forty.” 

Concluding her address of expostulation in those terms, Miss 
Garth led Norah to the library door, pushed Magdalen into the 
morning-room, and went on her own way sternly to the regions of 
the medicine-chest. 

In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner, she was accustomed to 
maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr. Vanstone’s daughters, 
after her proper functions as governess had necessarily come to an 
end. Norah, it is needless to say, had long since ceased to be her 
pupil ; and Magdalen had, by this time, completed her education. 
But Miss Garth had lived too long and too intimately under Mr. 
Vanstone’s roof to be parted with, for any purely formal considera- 
tions; and the first hint at going away which she had thought it 
her duty to drop, was dismissed with such affectionate warmth of 
protest, that she never repeated it again, except in jest. The entire 
management of the household was, from that time forth, left in her 
hands ; and to those duties she was free to add what companionable 
assistance she could render to Norah’s reading, and what friendly 
superintendence she could still exercise over Magdalen’s music. 
Such were the terms on which Miss Garth was now a resident in 
Mr. Vanstone’s family. 

Toward the afternoon the weather improved. At half-past one 
the sun was shining brightly ; and the ladies left the house, accom- 
panied by the dogs, to set forth on their walk. 

They crossed the stream, and ascended by the little rocky pass to 
the hills beyond ; then diverged to the left, and returned by a cross- 
road which led through the village of Combe-Raven. 

As they came in sight of the first cottages, they passed a man, 
hanging about the road, who looked attentively, first at Magdalen, 
then at Norah. They merely observed that he was short, that he 
was dressed in black, and that he was a total stranger to them — and 
continued their homeward walk, without thinking more about the 
loitering foot-passenger whom they had met on their way back. 

After they had left the village, and had entered the road which 
led straight to the house, Magdalena surprised Miss Garth by an- 
nouncing that the stranger in black had turned, after they had pass- 
ed him, and was now following them. “ He keeps on Norah’s side 
of the road,” she added, mischievously. “ I’m not the attraction — 
don’t blame me” 


NO NAME. 


25 


Whether the man was really following them, or not, made little 
difference, for they were now close to the house. As they passed 
through the lodge-gates, Miss Garth looked round, and saw that 
the stranger was quickening his pace, apparently with the purpose 
of entering into conversation. Seeing this, she at once directed the 
young ladies to go on to the house with the dogs, while she herself 
waited for events at the gate. 

There was just time to complete this discreet arrangement, before 
the stranger reached the lodge. He took off his hat to Miss Garth 
politely, as she turned round. What did he look like, on the face 
of him ? He looked like a clergyman in difficulties. 

Taking his portrait, from top to toe, the picture of him began 
with a tall hat, broadly encircled by a mourning band of crumpled 
crape. Below the hat was a lean, long, sallow face, deeply pitted 
with the small-pox, and characterized, very remarkably, by eyes of 
two different colors — one bilious green, one bilious brown, both 
sharply intelligent. His hair was iron-gray, carefully brushed round 
at the temples. His cheeks and chin were in the bluest bloom of 
smooth shaving ; his nose was short Roman ; his lips long, thin, and 
supple, curled up at the comers with a mildly-humorous smile. His 
white cravat was high, stiff, and dingy; the collar, higher, stiffer, 
and dingier, projected its rigid points on either side beyond his 
chin. Lower down, the lithe little figure of the man was arrayed 
throughout in sober-shabby black. His frock-coat was buttoned 
tight round the waist, and left to bulge open majestically at the 
chest. His hands were covered with black cotton gloves, neatly 
darned at the fingers ; his umbrella, worn down at the ferule to the 
last quarter of an inch, was carefully preserved, nevertheless, in an 
oil-skin case. The front view of him was the view in which he 
looked oldest; meeting him face to face, he might have been esti- 
mated at fifty or more. Walking behind him, his back and shoul- 
ders were almost young enough to have passed for five-and-thirty. 
His manners w T ere distinguished by a grave serenity. When he 
opened his lips, he spoke in a rich bass voice, with an easy flow of 
language, and a strict attention to the elocutionary claims of words 
in more than one syllable. Persuasion distilled from his mildly- 
curling lips; and, shabby as he was, perennial flowers of courtesy 
bloomed all over him from head to foot. 

“ This is the residence of Mr. Vanstone, I believe ?” he began> 
with a circular wave of his hand in the direction of the house. 
“Have I the honor of addressing a member of Mr. Vanstone’s 
family ?” 

“Yes,” said the plain-spoken Miss Garth. “You are addressing 
Mr. Vanstone’s governess.” 

The persuasive man fell back a step — admired Mr. Vanstone’s 


NO NAME. 


26 

governess — advanced a step again — and continued the conversa- 
tion. 

“ And the two young ladies,” he went on, “ the two young ladies 
who were walking with you are doubtless Mr. Vanstone’s daughters ? 
I recognized the darker of the two, and the elder as I apprehend, by 
her likeness to her handsome mother. The younger lady — ” 

“You are acquainted with Mrs. Yanstone, I suppose?” said Miss 
Garth, interrupting the stranger’s flow of language, which, all things 
considered, was beginning, in her opinion, to flow rather freely. 
The stranger acknowledged the interruption by one of his polite 
bcws, and submerged Miss Garth in his next sentence as if nothing 
had happened. 

“ The younger lady,” he proceeded, “ takes after her father, I pre- 
sume ? I assure you, her face struck me. Looking at it with my 
friendly interest in the family, I thought it very remarkable. I said 
to myself— Charming, Characteristic, Memorable. Not like her sis- 
ter, not like her mother. No doubt, the image of her father ?” 

Once more Miss Garth attempted to stem the man’s flow of words. 
It was plain that he did not know Mr. Yanstone, even by sight — 
otherwise he would never have committed the error of supposing 
that Magdalen took after her father. Did he know Mrs. Yanstone 
any better ? He had left Miss Garth’s question on that point unan- 
swered. In the name of wonder, who was he ? Powers of impu- 
dence ! what did he want ? 

“ You may be a friend of the family, though I don’t remember 
your face,” said Miss Garth. “ What may your commands be, if 
you please ? Did you come here to pay Mrs. Yanstone a visit ?” 

“I had anticipated the pleasure of communicating with Mrs. 
Vanstone,” answered this inveterately evasive and inveterately civil 
man. “ How is she ?” 

“ Much as usual,” said Miss Garth, feeling her resources of polite- 
ness fast failing her. 

“ Is she at home ?” 

“ No.” 

“ Out for long ?” 

“ Gone to London with Mr. Vanstone.” 

The man’s long face suddenly grew longer. His bilious brown 
eye looked disconcerted, and his bilious green eye followed its ex- 
ample. His manner became palpably anxious; and his choice of 
words was more carefully selected than ever. 

Is Mrs. Y anstone’s absence likely to extend over any very 
lengthened period ?” he inquired. 

“ It will extend over three weeks,” replied Miss Garth. “ I think 
you have now asked me questions enough,” she went on, beginning 
to let her temper get the better of her at last. “ Be so good, if you 



CAPTAIN WRAGGE. POST-OFFICE, BRISTOL. 



\ 


/ 


NO NAME. 


20 


please, as to mention your business and your name. If you have any 
message to leave for Mrs. Yanstone, I shall be writing to her by to- 
night’s post, and I can take charge of it.” 

“ A thousand thanks ! A most valuable suggestion. Permit me 
to take advantage of it immediately.” 

He was not in the least affected by the severity of Miss Garth’s 
looks and language — he was simply relieved by her proposal, and 
he showed it with the most engaging sincerity. This time his bil- 
ious green eye took the initiative, and set his bilious brown eye the 
example of recovered serenity. His curling lips took a new twist 
upward ; he tucked his umbrella briskly under his arm ; and pro- 
duced from the breast of his coat a large old-fashioned black pocket- 
book. From this he took a pencil and a card — hesitated and con- 
sidered for a moment — wrote rapidly on the card — and placed it, 
with the politest alacrity, in Miss Garth’s hand. 

“ I shall feel personally obliged if you will honor me by inclosing 
that card in your letter, ’ he said. “ There is no necessity for my 
troubling you additionally with a message. My name will be quite 
sufficient to recall a little family matter to Mrs. Vanstone, which has 
no doubt escaped her memory. Accept my best thanks. This has 
been a day of agreeable surprises to me. I have found the coun- 
try hereabouts remarkably pretty; I have seen^Mrs. Yanstone’s two 
charming daughters; I have become acquainted with an honored 
preceptress in Mr. Yanstone’s family. I congratulate myself — I 
apologize for occupying your valuable time — I beg my renewed ac- 
knowledgments — I wish you good-morning.” 

He raised his tall hat. His brown eye twinkled, his green eye 
twinkled, his curly lips smiled sweetly. In a moment, he turned on 
his heel. His youthful back appeared to the best advantage ; his 
active little legs took him away trippingly in the direction of the 
village. One, two, three — and he reached the turn in the road. 
Four, five, six — and he was gone. 

Miss Garth looked down at the card in her hand, and looked up 
again in blank astonishment. The name and address of the clerical- 
looking stranger (both written in pencil) ran as follows : 

Gajptain Wragge. Post-office , Bristol . 


30 


NO NAME. 


CHAPTER III. 

When she returned to the house, Miss Garth made no attempt tG 
conceal her unfavorable opinion of the stranger in black. His ob- 
ject was, no doubt, to obtain pecuniary assistance from Mrs. Van- 
stone,, What the nature of his claim on her might be, seemed less 
intelligible — unless it was the claim of a poor relation. Had Mrs. 
Vanstone ever mentioned, in the presence of her daughters, the 
name of Captain Wragge? Neither of them recollected to have 
heard it before. Had Mrs. Vanstone ever referred to any poor rela- 
tions who were dependent on her ? On the contrary, she had men- 
tioned of late years that she doubted having any relations at all who 
were still living. And yet Captain Wragge had plainly declared 
that the name on his card would recall “ a family matter ” to Mrs. 
Vanstone’s memory. What did it mean? A false statement, on the 
stranger’s part, without any intelligible reason for making it ? Or 
a second mystery, following close on the heels of the mysterious 
journey to London ? 

All the probabilities seemed to point to some hidden connection 
between the “ family affairs ” which had taken Mr. and Mrs. Van- 
stone so suddenly from home, and the “ family matter ” associated 
with the name of Captain Wragge. Miss Garth’s doubts thronged 
back irresistibly on her mind, as she sealed her letter to Mrs. Van- 
stone, with the captain’s card added by way of inclosure. 

By return of post the answer arrived. 

Always the earliest riser among the ladies of the house, Miss 
Garth was alone in the breakfast-room when the letter was brought 
in. Her first glance at its contents convinced her of the necessity 
of reading it carefully through in retirement, before any embarrass- 
ing questions could be put to her. Leaving a message with the 
servant requesting Norah to make the tea that morning, she went 
up stairs at once to the solitude and security of her own room. 

Mrs. Vanstone’s letter extended to some length. The first part of 
it referred to Captain Wragge, and entered unreservedly into all 
necessary explanations relating to the man himself and to the mo- 
tive which had brought him to Combe-Raven. 

It appeared from Mrs. Vanstone’s statement that her mother had 
been twice married. Her mother’s first husband had been a certain 
Doctor Wragge — a widower with young children ; and one of those 
children was now the unmilitary-looking captain, whose address was 


NO NAME. 


31 


'‘Post-office, Bristol.” Mrs. Wragge had left no family by her first 
husband ; and had afterward married Mrs. Yanstone’s father. Of 
that second marriage Mrs. Yanstone herself was the only issue. She 
had lost both her parents while she was still a young woman ; and, 
in course of years, her mother’s family connections (who were then 
her nearest surviving relatives) had been one after another removed 
by death. She was left, at the present writing, without a relation 
in the world — excepting perhaps certain cousins whom she had 
never seen, and of whose existence even, at the present moment, 
she possessed no positive knowledge. 

Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge 
on Mrs. Yanstone ? 

None whatever. As the son of her mother’s first husband, by that 
husband’s first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy could 
have included him at any time in the list of Mrs. Yanstone’s most 
distant relations. Well knowing this (the letter proceeded to say), 
he had nevertheless persisted in forcing himself upon her as a spe- 
cies of family connection ; and she had weakly sanctioned the in- 
trusion, solely from the dread that he would otherwise introduce 
himself to Mr. Yanstone’s notice, and take unblushing advantage of 
Mr. Yanstone’s generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her 
husband to be annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any per- 
son who claimed, however preposterously, a family connection with 
herself, it had been her practice, for many years past, to assist the 
captain from her own purse, on the condition that he should never 
come near the house, and that he should not presume to make any 
application whatever to Mr. Yanstone. 

Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Yanstone 
further explained that she had perhaps boen the more inclined to 
adopt it, through having been always accustomed, in her early days, 
to see the captain living now upon one member, and now upon an- 
other, of her mother’s family. Possessed of abilities which might 
have raised him to distinction, in almost any career that he could 
have chosen, he had nevertheless, from his youth upward, been a 
disgrace to all his relatives. He had been expelled the militia regi- 
ment in which he once held a commission. He had tried one em- 
ployment after another, and had discreditably failed in all. He had 
lived on his wits, in the lowest and basest meaning of the phrase. 
He had married a poor ignorant woman, who had served as a wait- 
ress at some low eating-house, who had unexpectedly come into a 
little money, and whose small inheritance he had mercilessly squan- 
dered to the last farthing. In plain terms, he was an incorrigible 
scoundrel ; and he had now added one more to the list of his many 
misdemeanors, by impudently breaking the conditions on which 
Mrs. Yanstone had hitherto assisted him. She had written at once 


32 


NO NAME. 


to the address indicated on his card, in such terms and to such pur 
pose as would prevent him, she hoped and believed, from ever ven- 
turing near the house again. Such were the terms in which Mrs. 
Yanstone concluded that first part of her letter which referred ex- 
clusively to Captain Wragge. 

Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in 
Mrs. Yanstone’s character which Miss Garth, after many years of in 
timate experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation 
as a matter of course ; receiving it all the more readily, inasmuch as 
it might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to ap 
pease the irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. F or this rea 
son especially, she perused the first half of the letter with an agree- 
able sense of relief. Far different was the impression produced on 
her, when she advanced to the second half, and when she had read 
it to the end. 

The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the 
journey to London. 

Mrs. Yanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friend- 
ship which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now 
felt it due to that friendship to explain confidentially the motive 
which had induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss 
Garth had delicately refrained from showing it, but she must natu- 
rally have felt, and must still be feeling, great surprise at the mys- 
tery in which their departure had been involved ; and she must 
doubtless have asked herself why Mrs. Yanstone should have been 
associated with family affairs which (in her independent position as 
to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr. Yanstone alone. 

Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable 
nor necessary to do, Mrs. Yanstone then proceeded to say that she 
would at once set all Miss Garth’s doubts at rest, so far as they re- 
lated to herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in ac- 
companying her husband to London was to see a certain celebrated 
physician, and to consult him privately on a very delicate and anx- 
ious matter connected with the state of her health. In plainer 
terms still, this anxious matter meant nothing less than the possibil 
ity that she might again become a mother. 

When the doubt had first suggested itself, she had treated it as a 
mere delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth 
of her last child ; the serious illness which had afflicted her after 
the death of that child in infancy ; the time of life at which she had 
now arrived — all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose 
in her mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She 
had felt the necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; 
and had shrunk, at the same time, from alarming her daughters, by 
summoning a London physician to the house. The medical opinion. 


NO NAME, 


33 


jought under the circumstances already mentioned, had now been 
obtained. Her doubt was confirmed as a certainty ; and the result, 
which might be expected to take place toward the end of the sum- 
mer, was, at her age and with her constitutional peculiarities, a sub- 
ject for serious future anxiety, to say the least of it. The physician 
had done his best to encourage her; but she had understood the 
drift of his questions more clearly than he supposed, and she knew 
that he looked to the future with more than ordinary doubt. 

Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Yanstone requested that 
they might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. 
She had felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, un- 
til those suspicions had been confirmed — and she now recoiled, with 
even greater reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any 
way alarmed about her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for 
the present, and to wait hopefully till the summer came. In the 
mean time they would all, she trusted, be happily reunited on the 
twenty-third of the month, which Mr. Yanstone had fixed on as the 
day for their return. With this intimation, and with the customary 
messages, the letter, abruptly and confusedly, came to an end. 

For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Yanstone 
was the only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she 
lad laid the letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely 
)n her mind a doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the 
explanation which she had just read really as satisfactory and a** 
complete as it professed to be ? Testing it plainly by facts, surely 
aot. 

On the morning of her departure, Mrs. Yanstone had unquestion- 
ably left the house in good spirits. At her age, and in her state of 
health, were good spirits compatible with such an errand to a physi- 
cian as the errand on which she was bent ? Then, again, had that 
‘etter from New Orleans, which had necessitated Mr. Yanstone’s de- 
parture, no share in occasioning his wife’s departure as well ? Why, 
otherwise, had she looked up so eagerly the moment her daughter 
mentioned the post -mark. Granting the avowed motive for her 
journey — did not her manner, on the morning when the letter was 
opened, and again on the morning of departure, suggest the exist- 
ence of some other motive which her letter kept concealed ? 

If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing 
one. Mrs. Yanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship 
with Miss Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in 
her, on one subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the strict- 
est reserve toward her on another. Naturally frank and straight- 
forward in all her own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from plainly 
pursuing her doubts to this result: a want of loyalty toward her 


34 


NO NAME. 


tried and valued friend seemed implied in the mere dawning of it 
on her mind. 

She locked up the letter in her desk ; roused herself resolutely to 
attend to the passing interests of the day ; and went down stairs 
again to the breakfast - room. Amidst many uncertainties, this at 
least was clear, Mr. and Mrs. Yanstone were coming back on the 
twenty-third of the month. Who could say what new revelations 
might not come back with them ? 


CHAPTER IV. 

No new revelations came back with them : no anticipations asso- 
ciated with their return were realized. On the one forbidden sub- 
ject of their errand in London, there was no moving either the mas- 
ter or the mistress of the house. Whatever their object might have 
been, they had to all appearance successfully accomplished it — for 
they both returned in perfect possession of their every-day looks 
and manners. Mrs. Yanstone’s spirits had subsided to their natural 
quiet level ; Mr. Vanstone's imperturbable cheerfulness sat as easily 
and indolently on him as usual. This was the one noticeable result 
of their journey — this, and no more. Had the household revolution 
run its course already? Was the secret thus far hidden impenetra- 
bly, hidden forever ? 

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has 
lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day 
on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that 
has passed over it ; water gives back to the tell - tale surface the 
body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in 
ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-se- 
crecy in the thoughts, through the door- way of the eyes ; and Love 
finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the 
inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature : the last- 
ing preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never 
yet seen. 

How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe- 
Raven doomed to disclose itself? Through what coming event in 
the daily lives of the father, the mother, and the daughters, was 
the law of revelation destined to break the fatal way to discovery ? 
The way opened (unseen by the parents, and unsuspected by the 
children) through the first event that happened after Mr. and Mrs. 
Vanstone’s return — an event which presented, on the surface of it, 
no interest of greater importance than the trivial social ceremony of 
a morning call. 


ffo NAME. 


35 


Three flays after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had 
Come beck, the female members of the family happened to be as- 
sembled together in the morning-room. The view from the win- 
dows -ooked over the flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being 
protected at its outward extremity by a fence, and approached from 
the lane beyond by a wicket-gate. During an interval in the con- 
versation, the attention of the ladies was suddenly attracted to thii 
gate, by the sharp sound of the iron latch falling in its socket. 
Some one had entered the shrubbery from the lane ; and Magdalen 
at once placed herself at the window to catch the first sight of the 
visitor through the trees. 

After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at 
the point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden- walk 
which led to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively, with- 
out appearing, at first, to know who he was. As he came nearer, 
however, she started in astonishment ; and turning quickly to her 
mother and sister, proclaimed the gentleman in the garden to be no 
other than “ Mr. Francis Clare.” 

The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone’s oldest 
associate and nearest neighbor. 

Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage, sit- 
uated just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit of 
the Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a 
family of great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that he 
had derived from his ancestors, was the possession of a magnificent 
library, which not only filled all the rooms in his modest little 
dwelling, but lined the staircases and passages as well. Mr. Clare’s 
books represented the one important interest of Mr. Clare’s life. 
He had been a widower for many years past, and made no secret of 
his philosophical resignation to the loss of his wife. As a father, he 
regarded his family of three sons in the light of a necessary domes- 
tic evil, which perpetually threatened the sanctity of his study and 
the safety of his books. When the boys went to school, Mr. Clare 
said “ good-bye ” to them — and “ thank God ” to himself. As for 
his small income, and his still smaller domestic establishment, he 
looked at them both from the same satirically indifferent point of 
view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree. He abandoned 
the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old woman 
who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to 
venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year’s 
end to the other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope ; his 
chosen philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and 
his fresh air under protest ; and always walked the same distance 
to a yard, on the ugliest high-road in the neighborhood. He was 
crooked of hack, and quick of temper. He could digest radishes 


NO NAME. 


86 

and sleep after green tea. His views of human nature were the 
views of Diogenes, tempered by Rochefoucault ; his personal habits 
were slovenly in the last degree ; and his favorite boast was that he 
had outlived all human prejudices. 

Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What 
nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had 
ever discovered. Mr. Yanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that “ Mr. 
Clare’s worst side was his outside ” — but in this expression of opin- 
ion he stood alone among his neighbors. The association between 
these two widely-dissimilar men had lasted for many years, and was 
almost close enough to be called a friendship. They had acquired 
a habit of meeting to smoke together on certain evenings in the 
week, in the cynic- philosopher’s study, and of there disputing on 
every imaginable subject — Mr. Yanstone flourishing the stout cud- 
gels of assertion, and Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged- 
tools of sophistry. They generally quarreled at night, and met on 
the neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the 
next morning. The bond of intercourse thus curiously established 
between them was strengthened on Mr. Yanstone’s side by a hearty 
interest in his neighbor’s three sons — an interest by which those 
sons benefited all the more importantly, seeing that one of the preju- 
dices which their father had outlived was a prejudice in favor of 
his own children. 

“ I look at those boys,” the philosopher was accustomed to say, 
“ with a perfectly impartial eye ; I dismiss the unimportant accident 
of their birth from all consideration ; and I find them below the 
average in every respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman 
has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse 
of extraordinary ability. My boys have been addle-headed from 
infancy. If I had any capital to give them, I should make Frank 
a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer — those being the only 
human vocations I know of which are certain to be always in re- 
quest. As it is, I have no money to help them with ; and they have 
no brains to help themselves. They appear to me to be three human 
superfluities in dirty jackets and noisy boots ; and, unless they clear 
themselves off the community by running away, I don’t myself pro- 
fess to see what is to be done with them.” 

Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Yanstone’s views were still fast im- 
prisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and through 
his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on the foun- 
dation of a well-reputed grammar-school. In holiday -time they 
were mercifully allowed the run of Mr. Yanstone’s paddock ; and 
were humanized and refined by association, indoors, with Mrs. Yarn 
stone and her daughters. On these occasions, Mr. Clare used some- 
times to walk across from his cottage (in his dressing-gown and 


NO NAME. 


37 


slippers;, and look at the boys disparagingly, through the window 
or over the fence, as if they were three wild animals whom his neigh- 
bor was attempting to tame. “You and your wife are excellent 
people,” he used to say to Mr. Vanstone. “ I respect your honest 
prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all my heart. But 
you are so wrong about them — you are indeed ! I wish to give no 
offense; I speak quite impartially — but mark my words, Vanstone : 
they’ll all three turn out ill, in spite of every thing you can do to 
prevent it.” 

In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the 
same curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and friend 
between the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly than 
ever. A civil engineer in the north of England, who owed certain 
obligations to Mr. Vanstone, expressed his willingness to take Frank 
under superintendence, on terms of the most favorable kind. When 
this proposal was received, Mr. Clare, as usual, first shifted his own 
character as Frank’s father on Mr. Vanstone’s shoulders — and then 
moderated his neighbor’s parental enthusiasm from the point of 
view of an impartial spectator. 

“ It’s the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have hap- 
pened,” cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm. 

“ My good fellow, he won’t take it,” retorted Mr. Clare, with the 
icy composure of a disinterested friend. 

“ But he shall take it,” persisted Mr. Vanstone. 

“ Say he shall have a mathematical head,” rejoined Mr. Clare ; 
“say he shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose. 
Pooh ! pooh ! you don’t look at him with my impartial eyes. I say, 
No mathematics, no industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose. 
Frank is a compound of negatives — and there they are.” 

“Hang your negatives !” shouted Mr. Vanstone. “ I don’t care a 
rush for negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this 
splendid chance ; and I’ll lay you any wager you like he makes the 
best of it.” 

“ I am not rich enough to lay wagers, usually,” replied Mr. Clare ; 
“ but I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere ; and 
I’ll lay you that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad 
shilling.” 

“ Done !” said Mr. Vanstone. “ No : stop a minute ! I won’t do 
the lad’s character the injustice of backing it at even money. I’ll 
lay you five to one Frank turns up trumps in this business ! You 
ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking of him as you do. What 
sort of hocus-pocus you bring it about by, I don’t pretend to know ; 
but you always end in making me take his part, as if I was his father 
instead of you. Ah yes ! give you time, and you’ll defend yourself. 
I won’t give you time ; I won’t have any of your special pleading. 


38 


NO NAME. 


Black’s white according to you. I don’t care : its black for all that. 
You may talk nineteen to the dozen— I shall write to my friend and 
say Yes, in Frank’s interests, by to-day’s post.” 

“ Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Francis Clare de- 
parted for the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to start in 
life as a civil engineer. 

From time to time, Mr. Yanstone’s friend communicated with him 
on the subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet, gen- 
tleman-like, interesting lad — but he was also reported to be rather 
slow at acquiring the rudiments of engineering science. Other let- 
ters, later in date, described him as a little too ready to despond 
about himself ; as having been sent away on that account, to some 
new railway works, to see if change of scene would rouse him ; and 
as having benefited in every respect by the experiment — except per- 
haps in regard to his professional studies, which still advanced but 
slowly. Subsequent communications announced his departure, un- 
der care of a trustworthy foreman, for some public works in Belgium ; 
touched on the general benefit he appeared to derive from this new 
change ; praised his excellent manners and address, which were of 
great assistance in facilitating business communications with the 
foreigners — and passed over in ominous silence the main question 
of his actual progress in the acquirement of knowledge. These re- 
ports, and many others which resembled them, were all conscien- 
tiously presented by Frank’s friend to the attention of Frank’s fa- 
ther. On each occasion, Mr. Clare exulted over Mr. Vanstone ; and 
Mr. Vanstone quarreled with Mr. Clare. 44 One of these days you’ll 
wish you hadn’t laid that wager,” said the cynic philosopher. “ One 
of these days I shall have the blessed satisfaction of pocketing your 
guinea,” cried the sanguine friend. Two years had then passed 
since Frank’s departure. In one year more results asserted them- 
selves, and settled the question. 

Two days after Mr. Vanstone’s return from London, he was called 
away from the breakfast-table before he had found time enough to 
look over his letters, delivered by the morning’s post. Thrusting 
them into one of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, he took the let- 
ters out again, at one grasp, to read them when occasion served, 
later in the day. The grasp included the whole correspondence, 
with one exception — that exception being a final report from the 
civil engineer, which notified the termination of the connection be- 
tweed his pupil and himself, and the immediate return of Frank to 
his father’s house. 

While this important announcement lay unsuspected in Mr. Van 
stone’s pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast as rail- 
ways could take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr. Clare 
was {fitting iq studious solitude qver his books $nd his green tea, 


NO NAME. 


39 


with his favorite black cat to keep him company, he heard footsteps 
in the passage — the door opened — and Frank stood before him. 

Ordinary men would have been astonished. But the philosopher’s 
composure was not to be shaken by any such trifle as the unexpected 
return of his eldest son. He could not have looked up more calmly 
from his learned volume, if Frank had been absent for three minutes 
instead of three years. 

“Exactly what I predicted,” said Mr. Clare. “Don’t interrupt 
me by making explanations; and don’t frighten the cat. If there 
is any thing to eat in the kitchen, get it and go to bed. You can 
walk over to Combe-Raven to-morrow, and give this message from 
me to Mr. Yanstone : ‘ Father’s compliments, sir, and I have come 
back upon your hands like a bad shilling, as he always said I should. 
He keeps his own guinea, and takes your five ; and he hopes you’ll 
mind what he says to you another time.’ That is the message. Shut 
the door after you. Good-night.” 

“ Under these unfavorable auspices, Mr. Francis Clare made his 
appearance the next morning in the grounds at Combe-Raven ; and, 
something doubtful of the reception that might await him, slowly 
approached the precincts of the house. 

It was not wonderful that Magdalen should have failed to recog- 
nize him when he first appeared in view. He had gone away a 
backward lad of seventeen ; he returned a young man of twenty. 
His slim figure had now acquired strength and grace, and had in- 
creased in stature to the medium height. The small regular fea- 
tures, which he was supposed to have inherited from his mother, were 
rounded and filled out, without having lost their remarkable deli- 
cacy of form. His beard was still in its infancy ; and nascent lines 
of whisker traced their modest way sparely down his cheeks. His 
gentle wandering brown eyes would have looked to better advan- 
tage in a woman’s face — they wanted spirit and firmness to fit them 
for the face of a man. His hands had the same wandering habit as 
his eyes ; they were constantly changing from one position to an- 
other, constantly twisting and turning any little stray thing they 
could pick up. He was undeniably handsome, graceful, well-bred 
— but no close observer could look at him, without suspecting that 
the stout old family stock had begun to wear out in the later gen- 
erations, and that Mr. Francis Clare had more in him of the shadow 
of his ancestors than of the substance. 

When the astonishment caused by his appearance had partially 
subsided, a search was instituted for the missing report. It was 
found in the remotest recesses of Mr. Yanstone’s capacious pocket, 
and was read by that gentleman on the spot. 

The plain facts, as stated by the engineer, were briefly these. 
Frank was not possessed of the necessary abilities to fit him for his 


40 


NO NAME. 


new calling ; and it was useless to waste time, by keeping him any 
longer in an employment for which he had no vocation. This, after 
three years’ trial, being the conviction on both sides, the master had 
thought it the most straightforward course for the pupil to go home, 
and candidly place results before his father and his friends. In 
some other pursuit, for which he was more fit, and in which he could 
feel an interest, he would no doubt display the industry and perse- 
verance which he had been too much discouraged to practice in the 
profession that he had now abandoned. Personally, he was liked 
by all who knew him ; and his future prosperity was heartily desired 
by the many friends whom he had made in the North. Such was 
the substance of the report, and so it came to an end. 

Many men would have thought the engineer’s statement rather 
too carefully worded ; and, suspecting him of trying to make the 
best of a bad case, would have entertained serious doubts on the 
subject of Frank’s future. Mr. Yanstone was too easy-tempered and 
sanguine — and too anxious as well, not to yield his old antagonist 
an inch more ground than he could help — bo look at the letter from 
any such unfavorable point of view. Was it Frank’s fault if he had 
not got the stuff in him that engineers were made of? Did no other 
young men ever begin life with a false start ? Plenty began in that 
way, and got over it, and did wonders afterward. With these com- 
mentaries on the letter, the kind-hearted gentleman patted Frank on 
the shoulder. “ Cheer up, my lad !” said Mr. Yanstone. “ We will 
be even with your father one of these days, though he has won the 
wager this time !” 

The example thus set by the master of the house was followed 
at once by the family — with the solitary exception of Norah, whose 
incurable formality and reserve expressed themselves, not too gra- 
ciously, in her distant manner toward the visitor. The rest, led by 
Magdalen (who had been Frank’s favorite playfellow in past times) 
glided back into their old easy habits with him, without an effort. 
He was “ Frank ” with all of them but Norah, who persisted in ad- 
dressing him as “Mr. Clare.” Even the account he was now en- 
couraged to give of the reception accorded to him by his father, 
on the previous night, failed to disturb Norah’s gravity. She sat 
with her dark handsome face steadily averted, her eyes cast down, 
and the rich color in her cheeks warmer and deeper than usual. 
All the rest, Miss Garth included, found old Mr. Clare’s speech of 
welcome to his son quite irresistible. The noise and merriment 
were at their height, when the servant came in, and struck the 
whole party dumb by the announcement of visitors in the drawing- 
room. “ Mr. Marrable, Mrs. Marrable, and Miss Marrable ; Evergreen 
Lodge, Clifton.” 

Norah rose as readily as if the new arrivals had been a relief to 


NO NAME. 


41 


her mind. Mrs. Vanstone was the next to leave her chair. These 
two went away first, to receive the visitors. Magdalen, who pre- 
ferred the society of her father and Frank, pleaded hard to be let! 
behind ; but Miss Garth, after granting five minutes’ grace, took her 
into custody, and marched her out of the room. Frank rose to take 
his leave. 

“ No, no,” said Mr. Yanstone, detaining him. “Don’t go. These 
people won’t stop long. Mr. Marrable’s a merchant at Bristol. I’ve 
met him once or twice, when the girls forced me to take them to 
parties at Clifton. Mere acquaintances, nothing more. Come and 
smoke a cigar in the greenhouse. Hang all visitors — they worry 
one’s life out. I’ll appear at the last moment with an apology ; and 
you shall follow me at a safe distance, and be a proof that I was 
really engaged.” 

Proposing this ingenious stratagem, in a confidential whisper, 
Mr. Yanstone took Frank’s arm, and led him round the house by 
the back way. The first ten minutes of seclusion in the conserva- 
tory passed without events of any kind. At the end of that time, 
a flying figure in bright garments flashed upon the two gentlemen 
through the glass — the door was flung open — flower-pots fell in 
homage to passing petticoats — and Mr. Yanstone’s youngest daugh- 
ter ran up to him at headlong speed, with every external appearance 
of having suddenly taken leave of her senses. 

“ Papa ! the dream of my whole life is realized,” she said, as soon 
as she could speak. “ I shall fly through the roof of the greenhouse, 
if somebody doesn’t hold me down. The Marrables have come here 
with an invitation. Guess, you darling — guess what they’re going to 
give at Evergreen Lodge !” 

“A ball !” said Mr. Yanstone, without a moment’s hesitation. 

“ Private Theatricals ! ! !” cried Magdalen, her clear young voice 
ringing through the conservatory like a bell ; her loose sleeves fall- 
ing back, and showing her round white arms to the dimpled el- 
bows, as she clapped her hands ecstatically in the air. “‘The Ri- 
vals ’ is the play, papa— ‘ The Rivals,’ by the famous what’s-his-name 
—and they want me to act ! The one thing in the whole universe 
that I long to do most. It all depends on you. Mamma shakes her 
head ; and Miss Garth looks daggers ; and Norah’s as sulky as usual 
— but if you say Yes, they must all three give way, and let me do as 
I like. Say Yes,” she pleaded, nestling softly up to her father, and 
pressing her lips with a fond gentleness to his ear, as she whispered 
the next words. “ Say Yes, and I’ll be a good girl for the rest of 
my life.” 

“A good girl?” repeated Mr. Yanstone — “a mad girl, I think 
you must mean. Hang these people, and their theatricals ! I shall 
have to go indoors, and see about this matter. You needn’t throw 


42 


NO NAME. 


away your cigar, Frank. You’re well out of the business, and you 
can stop here.” 

“ No, he can’t,” said Magdalen. 44 He’s in the business too.” 

Mr. Francis Clare had hitherto remained modestly in the back- 
ground. He now came forward, with a face expressive of speech- 
less amazement. 

“Yes,” continued Magdalen, answering his blank look of inquiry 
with perfect composure. “You are to act. Miss Marrable and I 
have a turn for business, and we settled it all in five minutes. 
There are two parts in the play left to be filled. One is Lucy, the 
waiting - maid ; which is the character I have undertaken — with 
papa’s permission,” she added, slyly pinching her father’s arm; 
“ and he won’t say No, will he ? First, because he’s a darling ; sec- 
ondly, because I love him, and he loves me ; thirdly, because there 
is never any difference of opinion between us (is there ?) ; fourthly, 
because I give him a kiss, which naturally stops his mouth and set- 
tles the whole question. Dear me, I’m wandering. Where was I 
just now ? Oh yes ! explaining myself to Frank — ” 

“ I beg your pardon,” began Frank, attempting, at this point, to 
enter his protest. 

“ The second character in the play,” pursued Magdalen, without 
taking the smallest notice of the protest, “ is Falkland — a jealous 
lover, with a fine flow of language. Miss Marrable and I discussed 
Falkland privately on the window-seat while the rest were talking. 
She is a delightful girl — so impulsive, so sensible, so entirely un- 
affected. She confided in me. She said, 4 One of our miseries is 
that we can’t find a gentleman who will grapple with the hideous 
difficulties of Falkland.’ Of course I soothed her. Of course I 
said, 4 I’ve got the gentleman, and he shall grapple immediately.’ — 
4 Oh heavens ! who is he ?’ — 4 Mr. Fancis Clare.’ — 4 And where is he V 
— 4 In the house at this moment.’ — 4 Will you be so very charming, 
Miss Vanstone, as to fetch him V — 4 I’ll fetch him, Miss Marrable, 
with the greatest pleasure.’ I left the window-seat — I rushed into 
the morning-room — I smelled cigars — I followed the smell — and 
here I am.” 

44 It’s a compliment, I know, to be asked to act,” said Frank, in 
great embarrassment. 44 But I hope you and Miss Marrable will ex- 
cuse me — ” 

44 Certainly not. Miss Marrable and I are both remarkable for the 
firmness of our characters. When we say Mr. So-and-So is positive- 
ly to act the part of Falkland, we positively mean it. Come in, and 
be introduced.” 

44 But I never tried to act. I don’t know how.” 

44 Not of the slightest consequence. If you don’t know how, come 
to me, and I’ll teach you,” 


NO NAME. 


43 


“ You !” exclaimed Mr. Vanstone. “ What do you know about it ?’ f 

“ Pray, papa, be serious ! I have the strongest internal convic- 
tion that I could act every character in the play — Falkland included. 
Don’t let me have to speak a second time, Frank. Come and be in- 
troduced.” 

She took her father’s arm, and moved on with him to the door of 
the greenhouse. At the steps, she turned and looked round to see 
if Frank was following her. It was only the action of a moment ; 
but in that moment her natural firmness of will rallied all its re- 
sources — strengthened itself with the influence of her beauty — com- 
manded — and conquered. She looked lovely : the flush was ten- 
derly bright in her cheeks ; the radiant pleasure shone and sparkled 
in her eyes ; the position of her figure, turned suddenly from the 
waist upward, disclosed its delicate strength, its supple firmness, 
its seductive, serpentine grace. “ Come !” she said, with a coquet- 
tish beckoning action of her head. “ Come, Frank !” 

Few men of forty would have resisted her at that moment. 
Frank was twenty last birthday. In other words, he threw aside 
his cigar, and followed her out of the greenhouse. 

As he turned and closed the door — in the instant when he lost 
sight of her — his disinclination to be associated with the private 
theatricals revived. At the foot of the house-steps he stopped again ; 
plucked a twig from a plant near him ; broke it in his hand ; and 
looked about him uneasily, on this side and on that. The path to 
the left led back to his father’s cottage — the way of escape lay open. 
Why not take it ? 

While he still hesitated, Mr. Vanstone and his daughter reached 
the top of the steps. Once more, Magdalen looked round — looked 
with her resistless beauty, with her all-conquering smile. She 
beckoned again ; and again he followed her — up the steps, and over 
the threshold. The door closed on them. 

So, with a trifling gesture of invitation on one side, with a trifling 
act of compliance on the other : so — with no knowledge in his mind, 
with no thought in hers, of the secret still hidden under the journey 
to London — they took the way which led to that secret’s discovery, 
through many a darker winding that was yet to come. 


CHAPTER V. 

Mr. Vanstone’ s inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertain- 
ment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic 
disasters ; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, 
and in which her father and mother played the parts of chief victims 


44 


NO NAME. 


Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants— an only child. 
She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed 
father and mother, since the time when she cut her first tooth. Her 
seventeenth birthday was now near at hand ; she had decided on 
celebrating it by acting a play ; had issued her orders accordingly ; 
and had been obeyed by her docile parents as implicitly as usual. 
Mrs. Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be laid waste for a 
stage and a theatre. Mr. Marrable secured the services of a respect- 
able professional person to drill the young ladies and gentlemen, 
and to accept all the other responsibilities incidental to creating a 
dramatic world out of a domestic chaos. Having further accustom- 
ed themselves to the breaking of furniture and the staining of walls 
— to thumping, tumbling, hammering, and screaming ; to doors al- 
ways banging, and to footsteps perpetually running up and down 
stairs — the nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed 
that their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal delusion! 
It is one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose the 
play — it is another thing altogether to find the actors. Hitherto, 
only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the occasion had 
shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge. The sound and serious 
troubles were all to come. 

“ The Rivals ” having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as 
a matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of “ Lydia Lan- 
guish.” One of her favored swains next secured “ Captain Absolute,” 
and another laid violent hands on “ Sir Lucius O’Trigger.” These 
two were followed by an accommodating spinster relative, who ac- 
cepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of “ Mrs. Malaprop ” — and 
there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause. Nine more speak- 
ing characters were left to be fitted with representatives ; and with 
that unavoidable necessity the serious troubles began. 

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, 
for the first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of the 
play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it — or, they 
accepted characters, and then broke down in the efibrt to study 
them — or they volunteered to take the parts which they knew were 
already engaged, and declined the parts which were waiting to be 
acted — or they were afflicted with weak constitutions, and mischiev- 
ously fell ill when they were wanted at rehearsal — or they had Puri- 
tan relatives in the background, and, after slipping into their parts 
cheerfully at the week’s beginning, oozed out of them penitently, 
under serious family pressure, at the week’s end. Meanwhile, the 
carpenters hammered and the scenes rose. Miss Marrable, whos£ 
temperament was sensitive, became hysterical under the strain of 
perpetual anxiety; the family doctor declined to answer for the 
nervous consequences if something was not done. Renewed efforts 


NO NAME. 


45 


were made in every direction. Actors and actresses were sought 
witn a desperate disregard of all considerations of personal fitness. 
Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama or out of it, ac- 
cepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of u Sir Anthony Ab- 
solute;” the stage-manager undertaking to supply the necessary 
wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art. A lady 
whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stout 
— but whose heart was in the right place — volunteered to act the 
part of the sentimental “ Julia,” and brought with her the dramatic 
qualification of habitually wearing a wig in private life. Thanks to 
these vigorous measures, the play was at last supplied with repre- 
sentatives — always excepting the two unmanageable characters of 
“Lucy” the waiting-maid, and “Falkland,” Julia’s jealous lover. 
Gentlemen came ; saw Julia at rehearsal ; observed her stoutness 
and her wig; omitted to notice that her heart was in the right 
place ; quailed at the prospect, apologized, and retired. Ladies 
read the part of “ Lucy ;” remarked that she appeared to great ad- 
vantage in the first half of the play, and faded out of it altogether 
in the latter half ; objected to pass from the notice of the audience 
in that manner, when all the rest had a chance of distinguishing 
themselves to the end ; shut up the book, apologized, and retired. 
In eight days more the night of performance would arrive ; a pha- 
lanx of social martyrs two hundred strong, had been convened to 
witness it ; three full rehearsals were absolutely necessary ; and two 
characters in the play were not filled yet. With this lamentable 
story, and with the humblest apologies for presuming on a slight 
acquaintance, the Marrables appeared at Combe-Raven, to appeal to 
the young ladies for a “ Lucy,” and to the universe for a “ Falk- 
land,” with the mendicant pertinacity of a family in despair. 

This statement of circumstances — addressed to an audience which 
included a father of Mr. Yanstone’s disposition, and a daughter of 
Magdalen’s temperament — produced the result which might have 
been anticipated from the first. 

Either misinterpreting, or disregarding, the ominous silence pre- 
served by his wife and Miss Garth, Mr. Yanstone not only gave 
Magdalen permission to assist the forlorn dramatic company, but 
accepted an invitation to witness the performance for Norah and 
himself. Mrs. Yanstone declined accompanying them on account 
of her health ; and Miss Garth only engaged to make one among 
the audience, conditionally on not being wanted at home. The 
“ parts ” of “ Lucy ” and “ Falkland ” (which the distressed family 
carried about with them everywhere, like incidental maladies) were 
handed to their representatives on the spot. Frank’s faint remon- 
strances were rejected without a hearing ; the days and hours of re- 
hearsal were carefully noted down on the covers of the parts; and 


46 


NO NAME. 


the Marrables took their leave, with a perfect explosion of thanks — 
father, mother, and daughter sowing their expressions of gratitude 
broadcast, from the drawing-room door to the garden-gates. 

As soon as the carriage had driven away, Magdalen presented 
herself to the general observation under an entirely new aspect. 

“ If any more visitors call to-day,” she said, with the profoundest 
gravity of look and manner, “ I am not at home. This is a far 
more serious matter than any of you suppose. Go somewhere by 
yourself, Frank, and read over your part, and don’t let your atten- 
tion wander if you can possibly help it. I shall not be accessible 
before the evening. If you will come here — with papa’s permission 
— after tea, my views on the subject of Falkland will be at your dis- 
posal. Thomas ! whatever else the gardener does, he is not to make 
any floricultural noises under my window. For the rest of the 
afternoon I shall be immersed in study — and the quieter the house 
is, the more obliged I shall feel to every body.” 

Before Miss Garth’s battery of reproof could open fire, before the 
first outburst of Mr. Yanstone’s hearty laughter could escape his 
lips, she bowed to them with imperturbable gravity ; ascended the 
house-steps for the first time in her life, at a walk instead of a run ; 
and retired then and there to the bedroom regions. Frank’s help- 
less astonishment at her disappearance added a new element of ab- 
surdity to the scene. He stood first on one leg and then on the 
other ; rolling and unrolling his part, and looking piteously in the 
faces of the friends about him. “ I know I can’t do it,” he said. 
“ May I come in after tea, and hear Magdalen’s views ? Thank you 
— I’ll look in about eight. Don’t tell my father about this acting, 
please : I should never hear the last of it.” Those were the only 
words he had spirit enough to utter. He drifted away aimlessly in 
the direction of the shrubbery, with the part hanging open in his 
hand— the most incapable of Falklands, and the most helpless of 
mankind. 

Frank’s departure left the family by themselves, and was the sig- 
nal accordingly for an attack on Mr. Yanstone’s inveterate careless- 
ness in the exercise of his paternal authority. 

u What could you possibly be thinking of, Andrew, when you 
gave your consent?” said Mrs. Vanstone. “Surely my silence was 
a sufficient warning to you to say No ?” 

“ A mistake, Mr. Yanstone,” chimed in Miss Garth. “ Made with 
the best intentions — but a mistake for all that.” 

“ It may be a mistake,” said Norah, taking her father’s part, as 
usual. “ But I really don’t see how papa, or any one else, could 
have declined, under the circumstances.” 

“ Quite right, my dear,” observed Mr. Yanstone. “ The circum- 
stances, as you say, were dead against me. Here were these 





NO NAME. 


49 


• 

fortunate people in a scrape on one side ; and Magdalen, on the 
other, mad to act. I couldn’t say I had methodistical objections 
— I’ve nothing methodistical about me. What other excuse could 
I make ? The Marrables are respectable people, and keep the 
best company in Clifton. What harm can she get in their house ? 
If you come to prudence and that sort of thing — why shouldn’t 
Magdalen do what Miss Marrable does ? There ! there ! let the 
poor things act, and amuse themselves. We were their age once 
— and it’s no use making a fuss — and that’s all I’ve got to say 
about it.” 

With that characteristic defense of his own conduct, Mr. Yanstone 
sauntered back to the greenhouse to smoke another cigar. 

“ I didn’t say so to papa,” said Norah, taking her mother’s arm on 
the way back to the house, “ but the bad result of the acting, in my 
opinion, will be the familiarity it is sure to encourage between Mag- 
dalen and Francis Clare.” 

“You are prejudiced against Frank, my love,” said Mrs. Yanstone. 

Norah’s soft, secret, hazel eyes sank to the ground ; she said no 
more. Her opinions were unchangeable — but she never disputed 
with any body. She had the great failing of a reserved nature — the 
failing of obstinacy; and the great merit — the merit of silence. 
“ What is your head running on now ?” thought Miss Garth, casting 
a sharp look at Norah’s dark, downcast face. “You’re one of the 
impenetrable sort. Give me Magdalen, with all her perversities ; I 
can see daylight through her. You’re as dark as night.” 

The hours of the afternoon passed away, and still Magdalen re- 
mained shut up in her own room. No restless footsteps pattered on 
the stairs ; no nimble tongue was heard chattering here, there, and 
everywhere, from the garret to the kitchen — the house seemed hard- 
ly like itself, with the one ever-disturbing element in the family 
serenity suddenly withdrawn from it. Anxious to witness with 
her own eyes the reality of a transformation in which past experi- 
ence still inclined her to disbelieve, Miss Garth ascended to Mag- 
dalen’s room, knocked twice at the door, received no answer, open- 
ed it, and looked in. 

There sat Magdalen, in an arm-chair before the long looking- 
glass, with all her hair let down over her shoulders ; absorbed in 
the study of her part and comfortably arrayed in her morning wrap- 
per, until it was time to dress for dinner. And there behind her 
sat the lady’s-maid, slowly combing out the long heavy locks of her 
young mistress’s hair, with the sleepy resignation of a woman who 
had been engaged in that employment for some hours past. The 
sun was shining ; and the green shutters outside the window were 
closed. The dim light fell tenderly on the two quiet seated figures ; 
on the little white bed, with the knots of rose-colored ribbon whicli 


rto NAMB. 


50 # 

looped up its curtains, and the bright dress for dinner laid reach 
across it; on the gayly painted bath, with its pure lining of white 
enamel; on the toilet-table with its sparkling trinkets, its crystal 
bottles, its silver bell with Cupid for a handle, its litter of little 
luxuries that adorn the shrine of a woman’s bed-chamber. The lux- 
urious tranquillity ot the scene; the cool fragrance of flowers and 
perfumes in the atmosphere ; the rapt attitude of Magdalen, absorb- 
ed over her reading ; the monotonous regularity of movement in the 
maid’s hand and arm, as she drew the comb smoothly through and 
through her mistress’s hair — all conveyed the same soothing im- 
pression of drowsy, delicious quiet. On one side of the door were 
the broad daylight, and the familiar realities of life. On the other, 
was the dream-land of Elysian serenity — the sanctuary of unruffled 
repose. 

Miss Garth paused on the threshold, and looked into the room in 
silence. 

Magdalen’s curious fancy for having her hair combed at all times 
and seasons, was among the peculiarities of her character which 
were notorious to every body in the house. It was one of her fa- 
ther’s favorite jokes, that she reminded him, on such occasions, of a 
cat having her back stroked, and that he always expected, if the 
combing were only continued long enough, to hear her purr. Ex- 
travagant as it may seem, the comparison was not altogether inap- 
propriate. The girl’s fervid temperament intensified the essentially 
feminine pleasure that most women feel in the passage of the comb 
through their hair, to a luxury of sensation which absorbed her in 
enjoyment, so serenely self-demonstrative, so drowsily deep, that it 
did irresistibly suggest a pet cat’s enjoyment under a caressing hand. 
Intimately as Miss Garth was acquainted with this peculiarity in her 
pupil, she now saw it asserting itself for the first time, in association 
with mental exertion of any kind on Magdalen’s part. Feeling, 
therefore, some curiosity to know how long the combing and the 
studying had gone on together, she ventured on putting the ques- 
tion, first to the mistress ; and (receiving no answer in that quarter) 
secondly to the maid.” 

“All the afternoon, miss, off and on,” was the weary answer. 
“Miss Magdalen says it soothes her feelings and clears her mind.” 

Knowing by experience that interference would be hopeless, under 
these circumstances, Miss Garth turned sharply and left the room. 
She smiled when she was outside on the landing. The female mind 
does occasionally — though not often — project itself into the future. 
Miss Garth was prophetically pitying Magdalen’s unfortunate hus- 
band. 

Dinner-time presented the fair student to the family eye in the 
same mentally absorbed aspect. On all ordinary occasions Magda- 


NO NAME. 


51 


len’s appetite would have terrified those feeble sentimentalists, who 
affect to ignore the all-important influence which female feeding ex- 
erts in the production of female beauty. On this occasion, she re- 
fused one dish after another with a resolution which implied the 
rarest of all modern martyrdoms — gastric martyrdom. “I have 
conceived the part of Lucy,” she observed, with the demurest grav- 
ity. “ The next difficulty is to make Frank conceive the part of 
Falkland. I see nothing to laugh at — you would all be serious 
enough if you had my responsibilities. No, papa — no wine to-day, 
thank you. I must keep my intelligence clear. Water, Thomas — 
and a little more jelly, I think, before you take it away.” 

When Frank presented himself in the evening, ignorant of the 
first elements of his part, she took him in hand, as a middle-aged 
school-mistress might have taken in hand a backward little boy. 
The few attempts he made to vary the sternly practical nature of 
the evening’s occupation by slipping in compliments sidelong, she 
put away from her with the contemptuous self-possession of a wom- 
an of twice her age. She literally forced him into his part. Her 
father fell asleep in his chair. Mrs. Vanstone and Miss Garth lost 
their interest in the proceedings, retired to the farther end of the 
room, and spoke together in whispers. It grew later and later; 
and still Magdalen never flinched from her task — still, with equal 
perseverance, Norah, who had been on the watch all through the 
evening, kept on the watch to the end. The distrust darkened and 
darkened on her face as she looked at her sister and Frank ; as she 
saw how close they sat together, devoted to the same interest and 
working to the same end. The clock on the mantel-piece pointed 
to half-past eleven, before Lucy the resolute permitted Falkland the 
helpless to shut up his task-book for the night. “ She’s wonderful, 
ly clever, isn’t she ?” said Frank, taking leave of Mr. Vanstone at the 
hall door. “ I’m to come to-morrow, and hear more of her views — 
if you have no objection. I shall never do it ; don’t tell her I said 
so. As fast as she teaches me one speech, the other goes out of my 
head. Discouraging, isn’t it ? Good-night.” 

The next day but one was the day of the first full rehearsal. On 
the previous evening Mrs. Vanstone’s spirits had been sadly depress- 
ed. At a private interview with Miss Garth, she had referred again, 
of her own accord, to the subject of her letter from London — had 
spoken self-reproachfully of her weakness in admitting Captain 
Wragge’s impudent claim to a family connection with her — and 
had then reverted to the state of her health, and to the doubtful 
prospect that awaited her in the coming summer, in a tone of de- 
spondency which it was very distressing to hear. Anxious to cheer 
her spirits, Miss Garth had changed the conversation as soon as pos- 
sible-bad referred to the approaching theatrical performance — and 


52 


NO NAME. 


had relieved Mrs. Vanstone’s mind of all anxiety in that direction, 
by announcing her intention of accompanying Magdalen to each 
rehearsal, and of not losing sight of her until she was safely back 
again in her father’s house. Accordingly, when Frank presented 
himself at Combe-Raven on the eventful morning, there stood Miss 
Garth, prepared — in the interpolated character of Argus— to accom- 
pany Lucy and Falkland to the scene of trial. The railway con- 
veyed the three, in excellent time, to Evergreen Lodge ; and at one 
o’clock the rehearsal began. 


CHAPTER VI. 

I hope Miss Vanstone knows her part ?” whispered Mrs. Marrable, 
anxiously addressing herself to Miss Garth, in a corner of the thea- 
tre. 

44 If airs and graces make an actress, ma’am, Magdalen’s perform- 
ance will astonish us all.” With that reply, Miss Garth took out 
her work, and seated herself, on guard, in the centre of the pit. 

The manager perched himself, book in hand, on a stool close in 
front of the stage. He was an active little man, of a sweet and 
cheerful temper; and he gave the signal to begin with as patient 
an interest in the proceedings as if they had caused him no trouble 
in the past, and promised him no difficulty in the future. The two 
characters which open the comedy of The Rivals, 44 Fag,” and the 
44 Coachman,” appeared on the scene — looked many sizes too tall 
for their canvas background, which represented a 44 Street iiv Rath ” 
— exhibited the customary inability to manage their own arms, legs, 
and voices — went out severally at the wrong exits — and expressed 
their perfect approval of results, so far, by laughing heartily behind 
the scenes. 44 Silence, gentlemen, if you please,” remonstrated the 
cheerful manager. 44 As loud as you like on the stage, but the audi- 
ence mustn’t hear you off it. Miss Marrable ready ? Miss Vanstone 
ready ? Easy there with the 4 Street in Bath ;’ it’s going up crook- 
ed ! Face this way, Miss Marrable ; full face, if you please. Miss 
Vanstone — ” he checked himself suddenly. 44 Curious,” he said, 
under his breath — u she fronts the audience of her own accord !” 
Lucy opened the scene in these words : 44 Indeed, ma’am, I traversed 
half the town in search of it : I don’t believe there’s a circulating 
library in Bath I haven’t been at.” The manager started in his 
chair. “Mv heart alive! she speaks out without telling!” The 
dialogue went on. Lucy produced the novels for Miss Lydia Lan- 
guish’s private reading from under her cloak. The manager rose 
excitably to his feet. Marvelous ! No hurry with the books ; no 


NO NAME. 


53 


dropping them. She looked at the titles before she announced 
them to her mistress ; she set down “ Humphry Clinker ” on “ The 
Tears of Sensibility ” with a smart little smack which pointed the 
antithesis. One moment — and she announced J ulia’s visit ; another 
— and she dropped the brisk waiting-maid’s courtesy ; a third — and 
she was off the stage on the side set down for her in the book. 
The manager wheeled round on his stool, and looked hard at Miss 
Garth. “ I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said. u Miss Marrable 
told me, before we began, that this was the young lady’s first at- 
tempt. It can’t be, surely !” 

“ It is,” replied Miss Garth, reflecting the manager’s look of amaze- 
ment on her own face. Was it possible that Magdalen’s unintelligi- 
ble industry in the study of her part really sprang from a serious 
interest in her occupation — an interest which implied a natural fit- 
ness for it ? 

The rehearsal went on. The stout lady with the wig (and the 
excellent heart) personated the sentimental Julia from an inveter- 
ately tragic point of view, and used her handkerchief distractedly 
in the first scene. The spinster relative felt Mrs. Malaprop’s mis- 
takes in language so seriously, and took such extraordinary pains 
with her blunders, that they sounded more like exercises in elocu- 
tion than any thing else. The unhappy lad who led the forlorn 
hope of the company, in the person of “ Sir Anthony Absolute,” ex- 
pressed the age and irascibility of his character by tottering inces- 
santly at the knees, and thumping the stage perpetually with his 
stick. Slowly and clumsily, with constant interruptions, and in- 
terminable mistakes, the first act dragged on, until Lucy appeared 
again to end it in soliloquy, with the confession of her assumed 
simplicity and the praise of her own cunning. 

Here, the stage artifice of the situation presented difficulties 
which Magdalen had not encountered in the first scene — and here, 
her total want of experience led her into more than one palpable 
mistake. The stage-manager, with an eagerness which he had not 
shown in the case of any other member of the company, interfered 
immediately, and set her right. At one point she was to pause, 
and take a turn on the stage — she did it. At another, she was to 
stop, toss her head, and look pertly at the audience — she did it. 
When she took out the paper to read the list of the presents she 
had received, could she give it a tap with her finger (Yes) ? And 
lead off with a little laugh (Yes — after twice trying) ? Gould she 
read the different items with a sly look at the end of each sentence, 
straight at the pit (Yes, straight at the pit, and as sly as you please) ? 
The manager’s cheerful face beamed with approval. He tucked the 
play under his arm, and clapped his hands gayly ; the gentlemen, 
clustered together behind the scenes, followed his example ; the 


54 


NO NAME. 


ladies looked at each other with dawning doubts whether they had 
not better have left the new recruit in the retirement of private life. 
Too deeply absorbed in the business of the stage to heed any of 
them, Magdalen asked leave to repeat the soliloquy, and make quite 
sure of her own improvement. She went all through it again with- 
out a mistake, this time, from beginning to end ; the manager cele- 
brating her attention to his directions by an outburst of professional 
approbation, which escaped him in spite of himself. “ She can take 
a hint !” cried the little man, with a hearty smack of his hand on 
the prompt-book. “ She’s a born actress, if ever there was one 
yet !” 

“ I hope not,” said Miss Garth to herself, taking up the work 
which had dropped into her lap, and looking down at it in some 
perplexity. Her worst apprehension of results in connection with 
the theatrical enterprise, had foreboded levity of conduct with some 
of the gentlemen — she had not bargained for this. Magdalen, in 
the capacity of a thoughtless girl, was comparatively easy to deal 
with. Magdalen, in the character of a born actress, threatened seri- 
ous future difficulties. 

The rehearsal proceeded. Lucy returned to the stage for her 
scenes in the second act (the last in which she appears) with Sir 
Lucius and Fag. Here, again, Magdalen’s inexperience betrayed it- 
self — and here once more her resolution in attacking and conquer- 
ing her own mistakes astonished every body. “ Bravo !” cried the 
gentlemen behind the scenes, as she steadily trampled down one 
blunder after another. “ Ridiculous !” said the ladies, “ with such 
a small part as hers.” “ Heaven forgive me!” thought Miss Garth, 
coming round unwillingly to the general opinion. “ I almost wish 
we were Papists, and had a convent to put her in to-morrow.” One 
of Mr. Marrable’s servants entered the theatre as that desperate as- 
piration escaped the governess. She instantly sent the man behind 
the scenes with a message: “Miss Vanstone has done her part in 
the rehearsal ; request her to come here and sit by me.” The serv- 
ant returned with a polite apology : “ Miss Yanstone’s kind love, 
and she begs to be excused — she’s prompting Mr. Clare.” She 
prompted him to such purpose that he actually got through his 
part. The performances of the other gentlemen were obtrusively 
imbecile. Frank was just one degree better — he was modestly in- 
capable ; and he gained by comparison. “ Thanks to Miss Van- 
stone,” observed the manager, who had heard the prompting. “ She 
pulled him through. We shall be flat enough at night, when the 
drop falls on the second act, and the audience have seen the last of 
her. It’s a thousand pities she hasn’t got a better part !” 

“ It’s a thousand mercies she’s no more to do than she has,” mut- 
tered Miss Garth, overhearing him. “ As things are, the people can’t 


NO NAME. 


55 


well turn her head with applause. She’s out of the play in the sec- 
ond act — that’s one comfort !” 

No well-regulated mind ever draws its inferences in a hurry ; 
Miss Garth’s mind was well regulated ; therefore, logically speaking, 
Miss Garth ought to have been superior to the weakness of rushing 
at conclusions. She had committed that error, nevertheless, under 
present circumstances. In plainer terms, the consoling reflection 
which had just occurred to her, assumed that the play had by this 
time survived all its disasters, and entered on its long-deferred ca- 
reer of success. The play had done nothing of the sort. Misfortune 
and the Marrable family had not parted company yet. 

When the rehearsal was over, nobody observed that the stout 
lady with the wig privately withdrew herself from the company; 
and when she was afterward missed from the table of refreshments, 
which Mr. Marrable’s hospitality kept ready spread in a room near 
the theatre, nobody imagined that there was any serious reason for 
her absence. It was not till the ladies and gentlemen assembled for 
the next rehearsal that the true state of the case was impressed on 
the minds of the company. At the appointed hour no Julia appear- 
ed. In her stead, Mrs. Marrable portentously approached the stage, 
with an open letter in her hand. She was naturally a lady of the 
mildest good breeding : she was mistress of every bland convention- 
ality in the English language — but disasters and dramatic influences 
combined, threw even this harmless matron off her balance at last. 
For the first time in lier life Mrs. Marrable indulged in vehement 
gesture, and used strong language. She handed the letter sternly, 
at arms-length, to her daughter. “ My dear,” she said, with an as 
pect of awful composure, “ we are under a Curse.” Before the 
amazed dramatic company could petition for an explanation, she 
turned and left the room. The manager’s professional eye followed 
her out respectfully — he looked as if he approved of the exit, from a 
theatrical point of view. 

What new misfortune had befallen the play ? The last and worst 
of all misfortunes had assailed it. The stout lady had resigned her 
part. 

Not maliciously. Her heart, which had been in the right place 
throughout, remained inflexibly in the right place still. Her ex- 
planation of the circumstances proved this, if nothing else did. The 
letter began with a statement : She had overheard, at the last re- 
hearsal (quite unintentionally) personal remarks of which she was 
the subject. They might, or might not, have had reference to her— 
Hair; and her — Figure. She would not distress Mrs. Marrable by 
repeating them. Neither would she mention names, because it was 
foreign to her nature to make bad worse. The only course at all 
consistent with her own self-respect was to resign her part. She 


56 


NO NAME. 


inclosed it, accordingly, to Mrs. Marrable, with many apologies foi 
her presumption in undertaking a youthful character, at — what a 
gentleman was pleased to term — her Age ; and with what two ladies 
were rude enough to characterize as her disadvantages of — Hair, 
and — Figure. A younger and more attractive representative of 
Julia would no doubt be easily found. In the mean time, all per- 
sons concerned had her full forgiveness, to which she would only 
beg leave to add her best and kindest wishes for the success of the 
play. 

In four nights more the play was to be performed. If ever any 
human enterprise stood in need of good wishes to help it, that en- 
terprise was unquestionably the theatrical entertainment at Ever- 
green Lodge ! 

One arm-chair was allowed on the stage ; and into that arm-chair 
Miss Marrable sank, preparatory to a fit of hysterics. Magdalen 
stepped forward at the first convulsion; snatched the letter from 
Miss Marrable’s hand ; and stopped the threatened catastrophe. 

“ She’s an ugly, bald-headed, malicious, middle-aged wretch !” said 
Magdalen, tearing the letter into fragments, and tossing them over 
the heads of the company. “But I can tell her one thing — she 
sha’n’t spoil the play. I’ll act Julia.” 

“ Bravo !” cried the chorus of gentlemen — the anonymous gentle- 
man who had helped to do the mischief (otherwise Mr. Francis 
Clare) loudest of all. 

“ If you want the truth, I don’t shrink from owning it,” continued 
Magdalen. “ I’m one of the ladies she means. I said she had a head 
like a mop, and a waist like a bolster. So she has.” 

“ I am the other lady,” added the spinster relative. “ But I only 
said she was toa stout for the part.” 

“ I am the gentleman,” chimed in Frank, stimulated by the force 
of example. “ I said nothing — I only agreed with the ladies.” 

Here Miss Garth seized her opportunity, and addressed the stage 
loudly from the pit. 

“Stop! stop!” she said. “You can’t settle the difficulty that 
way. If Magdalen plays Julia, who is to play Lucy ?” 

Miss Marrable sank back in the arm-chair, and gave way to the 
second convulsion. 

“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Magdalen, “the thing’s simple 
enough, I’ll act Julia and Lucy both together.” 

The manager was consulted on the spot. Suppressing Lucy’s 
first entrance, and turning the short dialogue about the novels into 
a soliloquy for Lydia Languish, appeared to be the only changes of 
importance necessary to the accomplishment of Magdalen’s project. 
Lucy’s two telling scenes, at the end of the first and second acts, 
were sufficiently removed from the scenes in which Julia appeared 


NO NAME. 


57 


to give time for the necessary transformations in dress. Even Miss 
Garth, though she tried hard to find them, could put no fresh ob- 
stacles in the way. The question was settled in five minutes, and 
the rehearsal went on; Magdalen learning Julia’s stage situations 
with the book in her hand, and announcing afterward, on the 
journey home, that she proposed sitting up all night to study the 
new part. Frank thereupon expressed his fears that she would 
have no time left to help him through his theatrical difficulties. 
She tapped him on the shoulder coquettishly with her part. “You 
foolish fellow, how am I to do without you? You’re Julia’s jealous 
lover; you’re always making Julia cry. Come to-night, and make 
me cry at tea-time. You haven’t got a venomous old woman in a 
wig to act with now. It’s my heart you’re to break — and of course 
I shall teach you how to do it.” 

The four days’ interval passed busily in perpetual rehearsals, pub- 
lic and private. The night of performance arrived ; the guests as- 
sembled ; the great dramatic experiment stood on its trial. Mag- 
dalen had made the most of her opportunities ; she had learned all 
that the manager could teach her in the time. Miss Garth left 
her when the overture began, sitting apart in a corner behind the 
scenes, serious and silent, with her smelling-bottle in one hand, and 
her book in the other, resolutely training herself for the coming or- 
deal, to the very last. 

The play began, with all the proper accompaniments of a theat- 
rical performance in private life ; with a crowded audience, an Afri- 
can temperature, a bursting of heated lamp-glasses, and a difficulty 
in drawing up the curtain. “Fag” and “the Coachman,” who 
opened the scene, took leave of their memories as soon as they 
stepped on the stage ; left half their dialogue unspoken ; came to 
a dead pause ; were audibly entreated by the invisible manager to 
“come off;” and went off accordingly, in every respect sadder and 
wiser men than when they went on. The next scene disclosed Miss 
Marrable as “Lydia Languish,” gracefully seated, very pretty, beau- 
tifully dressed, accurately mistress of the smallest words in her 
part; possessed, in short, of every personal resource — except her 
voice. The ladies admired, the gentlemen applauded. Nobody 
heard any thing, but the words “ Speak up, miss,” whispered by 
the same voice which had already entreated “Fag” and “the 
Coachman” to “come off.” A responsive titter rose among the 
younger spectators; checked immediately by magnanimous ap- 
plause. The temperature of the audience was rising to Blood Heat 
— but the national sense of fair play was not boiled out of them 
yet. 

In the midst of the demonstration, Magdalen quietly made her 


58 


NO NAME. 


first entrance, as “ Julia.” She was dressed very plainly in dark 
colors, and wore her own hair; all stage adjuncts and alterations 
(excepting the slightest possible touch of rouge on her cheeks) 
having been kept in reserve to disguise her the more effectually 
in her second part. The grace and simplicity of her costume, the 
steady self-possession with which she looked out over the eager 
rows of faces before her, raised a low hum of approval and expec- 
tation. She spoke — after suppressing a momentary tremor — with a 
quiet distinctness of utterance which reached all ears, and which at 
once confirmed the favorable impression that her appearance had 
produced. The one member of the audience who looked at her 
and listened to her coldly, was her elder sister. Before the actress 
of the evening had been five minutes on the stage, Norah detected, 
to her own indescribable astonishment, that Magdalen had auda- 
ciously individualized the feeble amiability of “Julia’s” character, 
by seizing no less a person than herself as the model to act it by. 
She saw all her own little formal peculiarities of manner and move- 
ment unblushingly reproduced — and even the very tone of her voice 
so accurately mimicked from time to time, that the accents startled 
her as if she was speaking herself, with an echo on the stage. The 
effect of this cool appropriation of Norah ’s identity to theatrical 
purposes on the audience — who only saw results — asserted itself in 
a storm of applause on Magdalen’s exit. She had won two incon- 
testable triumphs in her first scene. By a dexterous piece of mim- 
icry, she had made a living reality of one of the most insipid char- 
acters in the English drama ; and she had roused to enthusiasm an 
audienee of two hundred exiles from the blessings of ventilation, 
all simmering together in their own animal heat. Under the cir- 
cumstances, where is the actress by profession who could have done 
much more ? 

But the event of the evening was still to come. Magdalen’s dis- 
guised re-appearance at the end of the act, in the character of 
“Lucy” — with false hair and false eyebrows, with a bright -red 
complexion and patches on her cheeks, with the gayest colors 
flaunting in her dress, and the shrillest vivacity of voice and man- 
ner — fairly staggered the audience. They looked down at their 
programmes, in which the representative of Lucy figured under an 
assumed name ; looked up again at the stage ; penetrated the dis- 
guise ; and vented their astonishment in another round of applause, 
louder and heartier even than the last. Norah herself could not 
de_iy this time that the tribute of approbation had been well de- 
served. There, forcing its way steadily through all the faults of in- 
experience — there, plainly visible to the dullest of the spectators, 
was the rare faculty of dramatic impersonation, expressing itself in 
every look and action of this girl of eighteen, who now stood on a 


NO NAME. 


59 


stage for the first time in her life. Failing in many minor requi- 
sites of the double task which she had undertaken, she succeeded 
in the one important necessity of keeping the main distinctions of 
the two characters thoroughly apart. Every body felt that the dif- 
ficulty lay here — every body saw the difficulty conquered — every 
body echoed the manager’s enthusiasm at rehearsal, which had 
hailed her as a born actress. 

When the drop-scene descended for the first time, Magdalen had 
concentrated in herself the whole interest and attraction of the play. 
The audience politely applauded Miss Marrable, as became the guests 
assembled in her father’s house : and good-humoredly encouraged 
the remainder of the company, to help them through a task for 
which they were all, more or less, palpably unfit. But, as the play 
proceeded, nothing roused them to any genuine expression of inter- 
est when Magdalen was absent from the scene. There was no dis- 
guising it : Miss Marrable and her bosom friends had been all hope- 
lessly cast in the shade by the new recruit whom they had summon- 
ed to assist them, in the capacity of forlorn hope. And this on Miss 
Marrable’s own birthday ! and this in her father’s house ! and this 
after the unutterable sacrifices of six weeks past ! Of all the domes- 
tic disasters which the thankless theatrical enterprise had inflicted 
on the Marrable family, the crowning misfortune was now consum- 
mated by Magdalen’s success. 

Leaving Mr. Vanstone and Norah, on the conclusion of the play, 
among the guests in the supper-room, Miss Garth went behind the 
scenes ; ostensibly anxious to see if she could be of any use ; really 
bent on ascertaining whether Magdalen’s head had been turned by 
the triumphs of the evening. It would not have surprised Miss 
Garth if she had discovered her pupil in the act of making terms 
with the manager for her forthcoming appearance in a public the- 
atre. As events really turned out, she found Magdalen on the stage, 
receiving, with gracious smiles, a card which the manager presented 
to her with a professional bow. Noticing Miss Garth’s mute look 
of inquiry, the civil little man hastened to explain that the card 
was his own, and that he was merely asking the favor of Miss Van- 
stone’s recommendation at any future opportunity. 

“ This is not the last time the young lady will be concerned in 
private theatricals, I’ll answer for it,” said the manager. “And if 
a superintendent is wanted on the next occasion, she has kindly 
promised to say a good word for me. I am always to be heard of, 
miss, at that address.” Saying those words, he bowed again, and 
discreetly disappeared. 

Vague suspicions beset the mind of Miss Garth, and urged her to 
insist on looking at the card. No more harmless morsel of paste- 
board was ever passed from one hand to another. The card con- 


60 


NO NAME. 


tamed nothing but the manager’s name, and, under it, the name and 
address of a theatrical agent in London. 

“ It is not worth the trouble of keeping,” said Miss Garth. 

Magdalen caught her hand before she could throw the card away 
— possessed herself of it the next instant — and put it in her pocket. 

“ I promised to recommend him,” she said — ■“ and that’s one rea- 
son for keeping his card. If it does nothing else, it will remind me 
of the happiest evening of my life — and that’s another. Come !” she 
cried, throwing her arms round Miss Garth with a feverish gayety — - 
“ congratulate me on my success !” 

“ I will congratulate you when you have got over it,” said Miss 
Garth. 

In half an hour more Magdalen had changed her dress ; had join- 
ed the guests; and had soared into an atmosphere of congratula- 
tion, high above the reach of any controlling influence that Miss 
Garth could exercise. Frank, dilatory in all his proceedings, was 
the last of the dramatic company who left the precincts of the 
stage. He made no attempt to join Magdalen in the supper-room 
— but he was ready in the hall with her cloak, when the carriages 
were called and the party broke up. 

“ Oh, Frank !” she said, looking round at him as he put the cloak 
on her shoulders, u I am so sorry it’s all over ! Come to-morrow 
morning, and let’s talk about it by ourselves.” 

“ In the shrubbery at ten ?” asked Frank, in a whisper. 

She drew up the hood of her cloak, and nodded to him gayly. 
Miss Garth, standing near, noticed the looks that passed between 
them, though the disturbance made by the parting guests prevent- 
ed her from hearing the words. There was a soft, underlying ten- 
derness in Magdalen’s assumed gayety of manner — there was a sud- 
den thoughtfulness in her face, a confidential readiness in her hand, 
as she took Frank’s arm and went out to the carriage. What did 
it mean? Had her passing interest in him as her stage-pupil, 
treacherously sown the seeds of any deeper interest in him, as a 
man ? Had the idle theatrical scheme, now that it was all over, 
graver results to answer for than a mischievous waste of time ? 

The lines on Miss Garth’s face deepened and hardened : she stood 
lost among the fluttering crowd around her. Norah’s warning 
words, addressed to Mrs. Yanstone in the garden, recurred to her 
memory — and now, for the first time, the idea dawned on her that 
Norali had seen consequences in their true light. 


NO NAME. 


61 


CHAPTER m 

Early the next morning Miss Garth and Norah met in the gar- 
den, and spoke together privately. The only noticeable result of 
the interview, when they presented themselves at the breakfast-ta- 
ble, appeared in the marked silence which they both maintained on 
the topic of the theatrical performance. Mrs. Van stone was entire- 
ly indebted to her husband and to her youngest daughter for all 
that she heard of the evening’s entertainment. The governess and 
the elder daughter had evidently determined on letting the subject 
drop. 

After breakfast was over, Magdalen proved to be missing, when 
the ladies assembled as usual in the morning-room. Her habits 
were so little regular that Mrs. Yanstone felt neither surprise nor 
uneasiness at her absence. Miss Garth and Norah looked at one an- 
other significantly, and waited in silence. Two hours passed — and 
there were no signs of Magdalen. Norah rose, as the clock struck 
twelve, and quietly left the room to look for her. 

She was not up stairs, dusting her jewelry and disarranging her 
dresses. She was not in the conservatory, not in the flower-garden ; 
not in the kitchen teasing the cook ; not in the yard playing with 
the dogs. Had she, by any chance, gone out with her father ? Mr. 
Yanstone had announced his intention, at the breakfast-table, of 
paying a morning visit to his old ally, Mr. Clare, and of rousing the 
philosopher’s sarcastic indignation by an account of the dramatic 
performance. None of the other ladies at Combe-Raven ever ven- 
tured themselves inside the cottage. But Magdalen was reckless 
enough for any thing — and Magdalen might have gone there. As 
the idea occurred to her, Norah entered the shrubbery. 

At the second turning, where the path among the trees wound 
away out of sight of the house, she came suddenly face to face with 
Magdalen and Frank: they were sauntering toward her, arm in 
arm, their heads close together, their conversation apparently pro- 
ceeding in whispers. They looked suspiciously handsome and hap- 
py. At the sight of Norah both started, and both stopped. Frank 
confusedly raised his hat, and turned back in the direction of his 
father’s cottage. Magdalen advanced to meet her sister, carelessly 
swinging her closed parasol from side to side, carelessly humming 
an air from the overture which had preceded the rising of the cur- 
tain on the previous night. 


62 


NO NAME. 


“ Luncheon - time already !” she said, looking at her watch. 
“ Surely not ?” 

“ Have you and Mr. Francis Clare been alone in the shrubbery 
since ten o’clock ?” asked Norah. 

“ Mr. Francis Clare ! How ridiculously formal you are. Why 
don’t you call him Frank ?” 

“ I asked you a question, Magdalen.” 

“ Dear me, how black you look this morning ! I’m in disgrace, 
I suppose. Haven’t you forgiven me yet for my acting last night ? 
I couldn’t help it, love ; I should have made nothing of Julia, if I 
hadn’t taken you for my model. It’s quite a question of Art. In 
your place, I should have felt flattered by the selection.” 

“ In your place, Magdalen, I should have thought twice before I 
mimicked my sister to an audience of strangers.” 

“That’s exactly why I did it — an audience of strangers. How 
were they to know? Come! come! don’t be angry. You are 
eight years older than I am — you ought to set me an example of 
good-humor.” 

“ I will set you an example of plain-speaking. I am more sorry 
than I can say, Magdalen, to meet you as I met you here just now !” 

“ What next, I wonder ? You meet me in the shrubbery at home, 
talking over the private theatricals with my old play-fellow, whom 
I knew when I was no taller than this parasol. And that is a glar- 
ing impropriety, is it ? * Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ You wanted an 
answer a minute ago — there it is for you, my dear, in the choicest 
Norman-French.” 

“ I am in earnest about this, Magdalen — ” 

u Not a doubt of it. Nobody can accuse you ’tof ever making 
jokes.” 

“ I am seriously sorry — ” 

“ Oh dear !” 

“ It is quite useless to interrupt me. I have it on my conscience 
to tell you — and I will tell you — that I am sorry to see how this in- 
timacy is growing. I am sorry to see a secret understanding estab- 
lished already between you and Mr. Francis Clare.” 

“ Poor Frank ! How you do hate him, to be sure. What on 
earth has he done to offend you ?” 

Norah’s self-control began to show signs of failing her. Her 
dark cheeks glowed, her delicate lips trembled, before she spoke 
again. Magdalen paid more attention to her parasol than to her 
sister. She tossed it high in the air, and caught it. “ Once !” she 
said — and tossed it up again. “ Twice !” — and she tossed it higher. 
“ Thrice — ” Before she could catch it for the third time, Norah 
seized her passionately by the arm, and the parasol dropped to the 
ground between them. 


NO NAME. 


63 


“You are treating me heartlessly,” she said. “For shame, Mag- 
dalen — for shame !” 

The irrepressible outburst of a reserved nature, forced into open 
self-assertion in its own despite, is of all moral forces the hardest to 
resist. Magdalen was startled into silence. For a moment, the two 
sisters — so strangely dissimilar in person and character — faced one 
another, without a word passing between them. For a moment, 
the deep brown eyes of the elder and the light gray eyes of the 
younger looked into each other with steady unyielding scrutiny on 
either side. Norah’s face was the first to change; Norah’s head 
was the first to turn away. She dropped her sister’s arm in silence. 
Magdalen stooped, and picked up her parasol. 

“ I try to keep my temper,” she said, “ and you call me heartless 
for doing it. You always were hard on me, and you always will be.” 

Norah clasped her trembling hands fast in each other. “Hard 
on you !” she said, in low, mournful tones — and sighed bitterly. 

Magdalen drew back a little, and mechanically dusted the parasol 
with the end of her garden cloak. 

“Yes!” she resumed, doggedly. “Hard on me, and hard on 
Frank.” 

“ Frank !” repeated Norah, advancing on her sister, and turning 
pale as suddenly as she had turned red. “Do you talk of yourself 
and Frank as if your interests were One already ? Magdalen ! if I 
hurt you , do I hurt him ? Is he so near and so dear to you as that ?” 

Magdalen drew farther and farther back. A twig from a tree 
near caught her cloak ; she turned petulantly, broke it off, and 
threw it on the ground. “ What right have you to question me ?” 
she broke out on a sudden. “ Whether I like Frank, or whether I 
don’t, what interest is it of yours ?” As she said the words, she 
abruptly stepped forward to pass her sister, and return to the house. 

Norah, turning paler and paler, barred the way to her. “ If I 
hold you by main force,” she said, “ you shall stop and hear me. I 
have watched this Francis Clare ; I know him better than you do. 
He is unworthy of a moment’s serious feeling on your part ; he is 
unworthy of our dear, good, kind-hearted father’s interest in him. 
A man with any principle, any honor, any gratitude, would not 
have come back as he has come back, disgraced — yes! disgraced 
by his spiritless neglect of his own duty. I watched his face while 
the friend who has been better than a father to him was comforting 
and forgiving him with a kindness he had not deserved : I watched 
his face, and I saw no shame, and no distress in it — I saw nothing 
but a look of thankless, heartless relief. He is selfish, he is ungrate- 
ful, he is ungenerous — he is only twenty, and he has the worst fail- 
ings of a mean old age already. And this is the man I find you 
meeting in secret — the man who has taken such a place in your fa- 
vor that you are deaf to the truth about him, even from my lips ! 


64 


NO NAME. 


Magdalen ! this will end ill. For God’s sake, think of what I have 
said to you, and control yourself before it is too late!” She stopped, 
vehement and breathless, and caught her sister anxiously by the 
hand. 

Magdalen looked at her in unconcealed astonishment. 

“You are so violent,” she said, “and so unlike yourself, that I 
hardly know you. The more patient I am, the more hard words 
I get for my pains. You have taken a perverse hatred to Frank ; 
and you are unreasonably angry with me, because I won’t hate him 
too. Don’t, Norah ! you hurt my hand.” 

Norah pushed the hand from her contemptuously. “ I shall never 
hurt your heart,” she said ; and suddenly turned her back on Mag- 
dalen as she spoke the words. 

There was a momentary pause. Norah kept her position. Mag- 
dalen looked at her perplexedly — hesitated — then walked away by 
herself toward the house. 

At the turn in the shrubbery path, she stopped, and looked back 
uneasily. “ Oh, dear, dear !” she thought to herself, “ why didn’t 
Frank go when I told him ?” She hesitated, and went back a few 
steps. “ There’s Norah standing on her dignity, as obstinate as 
ever.” She stopped again. “ What had I better do ? I hate quar- 
reling : I think I’ll make it up.” She ventured close to her sister, 
and touched her on the shoulder. Norah never moved. “ It’s not 
often she flies into a passion,” thought Magdalen, touching her 
again ; “ but when she does, what a time it lasts her ! — Come !” she 
said, “give me a kiss, Norah, and make it up. Won’t you let me 
get at any part of you, my dear, but the back of your neck ? Well, 
it’s a very nice neck — it’s better worth kissing than mine — and there 
the kiss is, in spite of you !” 

She caught fast hold of Norah from behind, and suited the action 
to the word, with a total disregard of all that had just passed, 
w T hich her sister was far from emulating. Hardly a minute since, 
the warm outpouring of Norah’s heart had burst through all ob- 
stacles. Had the icy reserve frozen her up again already ! It was 
hard to say. She never spoke ; she never changed her position — 
she only searched hurriedly for her handkerchief. As she drew it 
out, there was a sound of approaching footsteps in the inner re- 
cesses of the shrubbery. A Scotch terrier scampered into view; 
and a cheerful voice sang the first lines of the glee in “As You 
Like It.” “It’s papa!” cried Magdalen. “ Come, Norah — come 
and meet him.” 

Instead of following her sister, Norah pulled down the veil of her 
garden hat ; turned in the opposite direction ; and hurried back to 
the house. 

She ran up to her own room, and locked herself in. She was 
crying bitterly. 


NO NAME. 


65 


CHAPTER Vm. 

When Magdalen and her father met in the shrubbery, Mr. Van- 
stone’s face showed plainly that something had happened to please 
him since he had left home in the morning. He answered the 
question which his daughter’s curiosity at once addressed to him, 
by informing her that he had just come from Mr. Clare’s cottage ; 
and that he had picked up, in that unpromising locality, a startling 
piece of news for the family at Combe-Raven. 

On entering the philosopher’s study that morning, Mr. Vanstone 
had found him still dawdling over his late breakfast, with an open 
letter by his side, in place of the book which, on other occasions, 
lay ready to his hand at meal-times. He held up the letter, the mo- 
ment his visitor came into the room ; and abruptly opened the con- 
versation by asking Mr. Vanstone if his nerves were in good order, 
and if he felt himself strong enough for the shock of an overwhelm- 
ing surprise. 

“ Nerves ?” repeated Mr. Vanstone. “ Thank God, I know noth- 
ing about my nerves. If you have got any thing to tell me, shock 
or no shock, out with it on the spot.” 

Mr. Clare held the letter a little higher, and frowned at his visit- 
or across the breakfast-table. “ What have I always told you ?” he 
asked, with his sourest solemnity of look and manner. 

“ A great deal more than I could ever keep in my head,” answer- 
ed Mr. Vanstone. 

“ In your presence and out of it,” continued Mr. Clare, w I have 
always maintained that the one important phenomenon presented 
by modern society is — the enormous prosperity of Fools. Show me 
an individual Fool, and I will show you an aggregate Society which 
gives that highly-favored personage nine chances out of ten — and 
grudges the tenth to the wisest man in existence. Look where you 
will, in every high place there sits an Ass, settled beyond the reach 
of all the greatest intellects in this world to pull him down. Over 
our whole social system, complacent Imbecility rules supreme — 
snuffs out the searching light of Intelligence with total impunity — 
and hoots, owl-like, in answer to every form of protest, See how well 
we all do in the dark ! One of these days that audacious assertion 
vill be practically contradicted, and the whole rotten system of 
aodern society will come down with a crash.” 


66 


NO NAME. 


“ God forbid !” cried Mr. Yanstone, looking about him as if the 
crash was coming already. 

“ With a crash !” repeated Mr. Clare. “ There is my theory, in * 
few words. Now for the remarkable application of it, which this 
letter suggests. Here is my lout of a boy — ” 

“ You don’t mean that Frank has got another chance ?” exclaimed 
Mr. Vanstone. 

“ Here is this perfectly hopeless booby, Frank,” pursued the phi- 
losopher. “ He has never done any thing in his life to help himself, 
and, as a necessary consequence, Society is in a conspiracy to carry 
him to the top of the tree. He has hardly had time to throw away 
that chance you gave him, before this letter comes, and puts the 
ball at his foot for the second time. My rich cousin (who is intel 
lectually fit to be at the tail of the family, and who is therefore, as a 
matter of course, at the head of it) has been good enough to re< 
member my existence ; and has offered his influence to serve my 
eldest boy. Read his letter, and then observe the sequence of 
events. My rich cousin is a booby who thrives on landed property; 
he has done something for another booby who thrives on Politics, 
who knows a third booby who thrives on Commerce, who can do 
something for a fourth booby, thriving at present on nothing, whose 
name is Frank. Bo the mill goes. So the cream of all human re- 
wards is sipped in endless succession by the Fools. I shall pack 
Frank off to-morrow. In course of time, he’ll come back again on 
our hands, like a bad shilling : more chances will fall in his way, as 
a necessary consequence of his meritorious imbecility. Years will 
go on — I may not live to see it, no more may you — it doesn’t matter; 
Frank’s future is equally certain either way — put him into the army, 
the Church, politics, what you please, and let him drift : he’ll end in 
being a general, a bishop, or a minister of state, by dint of the great 
modern qualification of doing nothing whatever to deserve his 
place.” With this summary of his son’s worldly prospects, Mr. Clare 
tossed the letter contemptuously across the table, and poured him- 
self out another cup of tea. 

Mr. Yanstone read the letter with eager interest and pleasure. It 
was written in a tone of somewhat elaborate cordiality; but the 
practical advantages which it placed at Frank’s disposal were be- 
yond all doubt. The writer had the means of using a friend’s inter- 
est — interest of no ordinary kind — with a great Mercantile Firm in 
the City ; and he had at once exerted this influence in favor of Mr. 
Clare’s eldest boy. Frank would be received in the office on a very 
different footing from the footing of an ordinary clerk ; he would 
be “ pushed on ” at every available opportunity ; and the first “ good 
thing ” the House had to offer either at home or abroad, would be 
placed at his disposal. If he possessed fair abilities and showed 


NO NAME. 


67 


common diligence in exercising them, his fortune was made ; and 
the sooner he was sent to London to begin, the better for his own 
interests it would be. 

“ Wonderful news !” cried Mr. Vanstone, returning the letter. 
“ I’m delighted — I must go back and tell them at home. This is 
fifty times the chance that mine was. What the deuce do you mean 
by abusing Society ? Society has behaved uncommonly well, in my 
opinion. Where’s Frank ?” 

u Lurking,” said Mr. Clare. “ It is one of the intolerable peculiar- 
ities of louts that they always lurk. I haven’t seen my lout this 
morning. If you meet with him anywhere, give him a kick, and 
say I want him.” 

Mr. Clare’s opinion of his son’s habits might have been expressed 
more politely as to form ; but, as to substance, it happened, on that 
particular morning, to be perfectly correct. After leaving Magda- 
len, Frank had waited in the shrubbery, at a safe distance, on the 
chance that she might detach herself from her sister’s company, and 
join him again. Mr. Vanstone’s appearance immediately on Norah’s 
departure, instead of encouraging him to show himself, had deter- 
mined him on returning to the cottage. He walked back discon- 
tentedly ; and so fell into his father’s clutches, totally unprepared 
for the pending announcement, in that formidable quarter, of his 
departure for London. 

In the mean time, Mr. Yanstone had communicated his news — in 
the first place, to Magdalen, and afterward, on getting back to the 
house, to his wife and Miss Garth. He was too unobservant a man 
to notice that Magdalen looked unaccountably startled, and Miss 
Garth unaccountably relieved, by his announcement of Frank’s good 
fortune. He talked on about it, quite unsuspiciously, until the 
luncheon-bell rang — and then, for the first time, he noticed Norah’s 
absence. She sent a message down stairs, after they had assembled 
at the table, to say that a headache was keeping her in her own 
room. When Miss Garth went up shortly afterward to communicate 
the news about Frank, Norah appeared, strangely enough, to feel 
very little relieved by hearing it. Mr. Francis Clare had gone away 
on a former occasion (she remarked), and had come back. He might 
come back again, and sooner than they any of them thought for. 
She said no more on the subject than this : she made no reference 
to what had taken place in the shrubbery. Her unconquerable re- 
serve seemed to have strengthened its hold on her since the out- 
burst of the morning. She met Magdalen, later in the day, as if 
nothing had happened : no formal reconciliation took place between 
them. It was one of Norah’s peculiarities to shrink from all recon- 
ciliations that were openly ratified, and to take her shy refuge in 


68 


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reconciliations that were silently implied. Magdalen saw plainly, 
in her look and manner, that she had made her first and last protest. 
Whether the motive was pride, or sullenness, or distrust of herself, 
or despair of doing good, the result was not to be mistaken — Norah 
had resolved on remaining passive for the future. 

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Yanstone suggested a drive to his 
eldest daughter, as the best remedy for her headache. She readi- 
ly consented to accompany her father ; who thereupon proposed, as 
usual, that Magdalen should join them. Magdalen was nowhere to 
be found. For the second time that day, she had wandered into 
the grounds by herself. On this occasion, Miss Garth — who, after 
adopting Norah’s opinions, had passed from the one extreme of 
overlooking Frank altogether, to the other extreme of believing 
him capable of planning an elopement at five minutes’ notice — vol- 
unteered to set forth immediately, and do her best to find the miss- 
ing young lady. After a prolonged absence, she returned unsuc- 
cessful — with the strongest persuasion in her own mind that Mag- 
dalen and Frank had secretly met one another somewhere, but with- 
out having discovered the smallest fragment of evidence to confirm 
her suspicions. By this time the carriage was at the door, and Mr. 
Vanstone was unwilling to wait any longer. He and Norah drove 
away together; and Mrs. Yanstone and Miss Garth sat at home over 
their work. 

In half an hour more, Magdalen composedly walked into the 
room. She was pale and depressed, She received Miss Garth’s re- 
monstrances with a weary inattention ; explained carelessly that she 
had been wandering in the wood ; took up some books, and put 
them down again ; sighed impatiently, and went away up stairs to 
her own room. 

“ I think Magdalen is feeling the reaction, after yesterday,” said 
Mrs. Yanstone, quietly. “ It is just as we thought. Now the theat- 
rical amusements are all over, she is fretting for more.” 

Here was an opportunity of letting in the light of truth on Mrs. 
Yanstone’s mind, which was too favorable to be missed. Miss Garth 
questioned her conscience, saw her chance, and took it on the 
spot. 

“You forget,” she rejoined, “ that a certain neighbor of ours is 
going away to-morrow. Shall I tell you the truth? Magdalen is 
fretting over the departure of Francis Clare.” 

Mrs. Yanstone looked up from her work with a gentle, smiling 
surprise. 

“ Surely not ?” she said. “ It is natural enough that Frank should 
be attracted by Magdalen ; but I can’t think that Magdalen returns 
the feeling. Frank is so very unlike her ; so quiet and undemon- 
strative ; so dull and helpless, poor fellow, in some things. He is 


NO NAME. 


69 


handsome, I know, but he is so singularly unlike Magdalen, that I 
can’t think it possible — I can’t, indeed.” 

“ My dear good lady !” cried Miss Garth, in great amazement ; 
“ do you really suppose that people fall in love with each other on 
account of similarities in their characters ? In the vast majority of 
cases, they do just the reverse. Men marry the very last women, 
and women the very last men, whom their friends would think it 
possible they could care about. Is there any phrase that is oftener 
on all our lips than ‘ What can have made Mr. So-and-So marry that 
woman?’ — or ‘How could Mrs. So-and-So throw herself away on 
that man ?’ Has all your experience of the world never yet shown 
you that girls take perverse fancies for men who are totally un- 
worthy of them ?” 

“ Very true,” said Mrs. Yanstone, composedly. “ I forgot that. 
Still it seems unaccountable, doesn’t it ?” 

“ Unaccountable, because it happens every day !” retorted Miss 
Garth, good-humoredly. “ I know a great many excellent people 
who reason against plain experience in the same way — who read 
the newspapers in the morning, and deny in the evening that there 
is any romance for writers or painters to work upon in modern life. 
Seriously, Mrs. Yanstone, you may take my word for it — thanks to 
those wretched theatricals, Magdalen is going the way with Frank 
that a great many young ladies have gone before her. He is quite 
unworthy of her ; he is, in almost every respect, her exact opposite 
— and, without knowing it herself, she has fallen in love with him 
on that very account. She is resolute and impetuous, clever and 
domineering; she is not one of those model women who want a 
man to look up to, and to protect them — her beau-ideal (though she 
may not think it herself) is a man she can henpeck. Well ! one 
comfort is, there are far better men, even of that sort, to be had 
than Frank. It’s a mercy he is going away, before we have more 
trouble with them, and before any serious mischief is done.” 

“ Poor Frank !” said Mrs. Yanstone, smiling compassionately. 
“We have known him since he was in jackets, and Magdalen in 
short frocks. Don’t let us give him up yet. He may do better 
this second time.” 

Miss Garth looked up in astonishment. 

“And suppose he does better?” she asked. “ What then?” 

Mrs. Yanstone cut off a loose thread in her work, and laughed 
outright. 

“ My good friend,” she said, “ there is an old farm-yard proverb 
which warns us not to count our chickens before they are hatched. 
Let us wait a little before we count ours.” 

It was not easy to silence Miss Garth, when she was speaking un- 
der the influence of a strong conviction ; but this reply closed her 


70 


NO NAME. 


lips. She resumed her work ; and looked, and thought, unutterable 
things. 

Mrs. Yanstone’s behavior was certainly remarkable under the 
circumstances. Here, on one side, was a girl — with great personal 
attractions, with rare pecuniary prospects, with a social position 
which might have justified the best gentleman in the neighborhood 
in making her an offer of marriage — perversely casting herself away 
on a penniless idle young fellow, who had failed at his first start in 
life, and who, even if he succeeded in his second attempt, must be 
for years to come in no position to marry a young lady of fortune 
on equal terms. And there, on the other side, was that girl’s moth- 
er, by no means dismayed at the prospect of a connection which 
was, to say the least of it, far from desirable ; by no means certain, 
judging her by her own words and looks, that a marriage between 
Mr. Yanstone’s daughter and Mr. Clare’s son might not prove to 
be as satisfactory a result of the intimacy between the two young 
people, as the parents on both sides could possibly wish for! It 
was perplexing in the extreme. It was almost as unintelligible as 
that past mystery — that forgotten mystery now — of the journey to 
London. 

In the evening, Frank made his appearance, and announced that 
his father had mercilessly sentenced him to leave Combe-Raven by 
the parliamentary train the next morning. He mentioned this cir- 
cumstance with an air of sentimental resignation; and listened to 
Mr. Yanstone’s boisterous rejoicings over his new prospects, with a 
mild and mute surprise. His gentle melancholy of look and man- 
ner greatly assisted his personal advantages. In his own effeminate 
way, he was more handsome than ever, that evening. His soft 
brown eyes wandered about the room with a melting tenderness ; 
his hair was beautifully brushed ; his delicate hands hung over the 
arms of his chair with a languid grace. He looked like a conva- 
lescent Apollo. Never, on any previous occasion, had he practiced 
more successfully the social art which he habitually cultivated — the 
art of casting himself on society in the character of a well-bred In- 
cubus, and conferring an obligation on his fellow-creatures by al- 
lowing them to sit under him. It was undeniably a dull evening. 
All the talking fell to the share of Mr. Yanstone and Miss Garth. 
Mrs. Yanstone was habitually silent; Norah kept herself obstinately 
in the background; Magdalen was quiet and undemonstrative be^ 
yond all former precedent. From first to last, she kept rigidly on 
her guard. The few meaning looks that she cast on Frank flashed 
at him like lightning, and were gone before any one else could see 
them. Even when she brought him his tea; and when, in doing 
so, her self-control gave way under the temptation which no worn- 


NO NAME. 


71 


an can resist — the temptation of touching the man she loves — even 
then, she held the saucer so dexterously that it screened her hand. 
Frank’s self-possession was far less steadily disciplined: it only 
lasted as long as he remained passive. When he rose to go ; when 
he felt the warm, clinging pressure of Magdalen’s fingers round his 
hand, and the lock of her hair which she slipped into it at the same 
moment, he became awkward and confused. He might have be- 
trayed Magdalen and betrayed himself, but for Mr. Yanstone, who 
innocently covered his retreat by following him out, and patting 
him on the shoulder all the way. “ God bless you, Frank !” cried 
the friendly voice that never had a harsh note in it for any body. 
“ Your fortune’s waiting for you. Go in, my boy — go in and win.” 

“ Yes,” said Frank. “ Thank you. It will be rather difficult to 
go in and win, at first. Of course, as you have always told me, a 
man’s business is to conquer his difficulties, and not to talk about 
them. At the same time, I wish I didn’t feel quite so loose as I do 
in my figures. It’s discouraging to feel loose in one’s figures. — Oh, 
yes; I’ll write and tell you how I get on. I’m very much obliged 
by your kindness, and very sorry I couldn’t succeed with the en- 
gineering. I think I should have liked engineering better than 
trade. It can’t be helped now, can it ? Thank you, again. Good- 
bye.” 

So he drifted away into the misty commercial future — as aimless, 
as helpless, as gentleman-like as ever. 


CHAPTER IX. 

Three months passed. During that time Frank remained in 
London ; pursuing his new duties, and writing occasionally to re- 
port himself to Mr. Yanstone, as he had promised. 

His letters were not enthusiastic on the subject of mercantile oc- 
cupations. He described himself as being still painfully loose in his 
figures. He was also more firmly persuaded than ever — now when it 
was unfortunately too late — that he preferred engineering to trade. 
In spite of this conviction ; in spite of headaches caused by sitting 
on a high stool and stooping over ledgers in unwholesome air; in 
spite of want of society, and hasty breakfasts, and bad dinners at 
chop-houses, his attendance at the office was regular, and his dili- 
gence at the desk unremitting. The head of the department in 
which he was working might be referred to if any corroboration of 
this statement was desired. Such was the general tenor of the let- 
ters; and Frank’s correspondent and Frank’s father differed over 
them as widely as psual, Mr. Yanstone accepted them, as proofs 


72 


NO NAME. 


of the steady development of industrious principles in the writer. 
Mr. Clare took his own characteristically opposite view. “ These 
London men,” said the philosopher, “ are not to be trifled with by 
louts. They have got Frank by the scruff of the neck — he can’t 
wriggle himself free — and he makes a merit of yielding to sheer 
necessity.” 

The three months’ interval of Frank’s probation in London pass- 
ed less cheerfully than usual in the household at Combe-Raven. 

As the summer came nearer and nearer, Mrs. Yanstone’s spirits, in 
spite of her resolute efforts to control them, became more and more 
depressed. 

“ I do my best,” she said to Miss Garth ; “ I set an example of 
cheerfulness to my husband and my children — but I dread July.” 
Norah’s secret misgivings on her sister’s account rendered her more 
than usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year advanced. 
Even Mr. Yanstone, when July drew nearer, lost something of his 
elasticity of spirit. He kept up appearances in his wife’s presence 
- — but on all other occasions there was now a perceptible shade of 
sadness in his look and manner. Magdalen was so changed since 
Frank’s departure, that she helped the general depression, instead 
of relieving it. All her movements had grown languid; all her 
usual occupations were pursued with the same weary indifference; 
she spent hours alone in her own room ; she lost her interest in be- 
ing brightly and prettily dressed ; her eyes were heavy, her nerves 
were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the w T orse — in 
one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to herself 
and to all about her. Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these 
growing domestic difficulties, her own spirits suffered in the effort. 
Her memory reverted, oftener and oftener, to the March morning 
when the master and mistress of the house had departed for London, 
and when the first serious change, for many a year past, had stolen 
over the family atmosphere. When was that atmosphere to be clear 
again ? When were the clouds of change to pass off before the re- 
turning sunshine of past and happier times ? 

The spring and the early summer wore away. The dreaded month 
of J uly came, with its airless nights, its cloudless mornings, and its 
sultry days. 

On the fifteenth of the month, an event happened which took 
every one but Norah by surprise. For the second time, without 
the slightest apparent reason — for the second time, without a word 
of warning beforehand — Frank suddenly re-appeared at his father’s 
cottage. 

Mr. Clare’s lips opened to hail his son’s return, in the old charac- 
ter of the “ bad shilling ;” and closed again without uttering a word. 
There was a portentous composure in Frank’s manner which showed 


NO NAME. 


73 


that he had other news to communicate than the news of his dis- 
missal. He answered his father’s sardonic look of inquiry, by at 
once explaining that a very important proposal for his future benefit 
had been made to him, that morning, at the office. His first idea 
had been to communicate the details in writing ; but the partners 
had, on reflection, thought that the necessary decision might be 
more readily obtained by a personal interview with his father and 
his friends. He had laid aside the pen accordingly, and had re- 
signed himself to the railway on the spot. 

After this preliminary statement, Frank proceeded to describe the 
proposal which his employers had addressed to him, with every exter- 
nal appearance of viewing it in the light of an intolerable hardship. 

The great firm in the City had obviously made a discovery in re- 
lation to their clerk, exactly similar to the discovery which had 
formerly forced itself on the engineer in relation to his pupil. The 
young man, as they politely phrased it, stood in need of some special 
stimulant to stir him up. His employers (acting under a sense of 
their obligation to the gentleman by whom Frank had been recom- 
mended) had considered the question carefully, and had decided 
that the one promising use to which they could put Mr. Francis 
Clare was to send him forthwith into another quarter of the globe. 

As a consequence of this decision, it was now, therefore, proposed 
that he should enter the house of their correspondents in China; 
that he should remain there, familiarizing himself thoroughly on 
the spot with the tea trade and the silk trade for five years; and 
that he should return, at the expiration of this period, to the central 
establishment in London. If he made a fair use of his opportunities 
in China, he would come back, while still a young man, fit for a 
position of trust and emolument, and justified in looking forward, 
at no distant date, to a time when the House would assist him to 
start in business for himself. Such were the new prospects which 
— to adopt Mr. Clare’s theory — now forced themselves on the ever- 
reluctant, ever-helpless, and ever-ungrateful Frank. There was no 
time to be lost. The final answer was to be at the office on “ Mon- 
day, the twentieth the correspondents in China were to be written 
to by the mail on that day ; and Frank was to follow the letter by 
the next opportunity, or to resign his chance in favor of some more 
enterprising young man. 

Mr. Clare’s reception of this extraordinary news was startling in 
the extreme. The glorious prospect of his son’s banishment to 
China appeared to turn his brain. The firm pedestal of his philoso- 
phy sank under him ; the prejudices of society recovered their hold 
on his mind. He seized Frank by the arm, and actually accompanied 
him to Combe-Raven, in the amazing character of visitor to the house ! 

“ Here I am with my lout,” said Mr. Clare, before a word could 


74 


NO NAME. 


be uttered by the astonished family. “Hear his story, all of you. 
It has reconciled me, for the first time in my life, to the anomaly of 
his existence.” Frank ruefully narrated the Chinese proposal for 
the second time, and attempted to attach to it his own supplement- 
ary statement of objections and difficulties. His father stopped him 
at the first word, pointed peremptorily south-eastward (from Som- 
ersetshire to China) ; and said, without an instant’s hesitation : 
“ Go !” Mr. Vanstone, basking in golden visions of his young 
friend’s future, echoed that monosyllabic decision with all his heart. 
Mrs. Vanstone, Miss Garth, even Norah herself, spoke to the same 
purpose. Frank was petrified by an absolute unanimity of opinion 
which he had not anticipated ; and Magdalen was caught, for once 
in her life, at the end of all her resources. 

So far as practical results were concerned, the sitting of the family 
council began and ended with the general opinion that Frank must 
go. Mr. Vanstone’s faculties were so bewildered by the son’s sud- 
den arrival, the father’s unexpected visit, and the news they both 
brought with them, that he petitioned for an adjournment before 
the necessary arrangements connected with his young friend’s de- 
parture were considered in detail. “ Suppose we all sleep upon it ?” 
he said. “ To-morrow, our heads will feel a little steadier ; and to- 
morrow will be time enough to decide all uncertainties.” This sug- 
gestion was readily adopted ; and all further proceedings stood ad- 
journed until the next day. 

That next day was destined to decide more uncertainties than 
Mr. Vanstone dreamed of. 

Early in the morning, after making tea by herself as usual, Miss 
Garth took her parasol and strolled into the garden. She had 
slept ill ; and ten minutes in the open air before the family assem- 
bled at breakfast might help to compensate her, as she thought, for 
the loss of her night’s rest. 

She wandered to the outermost boundary of the flower-garden, 
and then returned by another path, which led back, past the side 
of an ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields 
from a corner of the lawn. A slight noise — like, and yet not like, 
the chirruping of a bird — caught her ear as she approached the 
summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance ; looked in ; and 
discovered Magdalen and Frank seated close together. To Miss 
Garth’s horror, Magdalen’s arm was unmistakably round Frank’s 
neck ; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment of 
discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been offering 
to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost of all the 
consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In plainer 
wqrds, she had just given Frank a kiss. 


NO NAME. 


75 


in the presence of such an emergency as now confronted her, Miss 
Garth felt instinctively that all ordinary phrases of reproof would be 
phrases thrown away. 

“ I presume,” she remarked, addressing Magdalen with the merci- 
less self-possession of a middle-aged lady, unprovided for the occa- 
sion with any kissing remembrances of her own — U I presume (what- 
ever excuses your effrontery may suggest) you will not deny that 
my duty compels me to mention what I have just seen to your fa- 
ther ?” 

“ I will save you the trouble,” replied Magdalen, composedly. u I 
will mention it to him myself.” 

With those words, she looked round at Frank, standing trebly 
helpless in a comer of the summer-house. “You shall hear what 
happens,” she said, with her bright smile. “ And so shall you,” she 
added for Miss Garth’s especial benefit, as she sauntered past the 
governess, on her way back to the breakfast-table. The eyes of Miss 
Garth followed her indignantly ; and Frank slipped out on his side, 
at that favorable opportunity. 

Under these circumstances, there was but one course that any re- 
spectable woman could take — she could only shudder. Miss Garth 
registered, her protest in that form, and returned to the house. 

When breakfast was over, and when Mr. Yanstone’s hand de- 
scended to his pocket in search of his cigar-case, Magdalen rose ; 
looked significantly at Miss Garth; and followed her father into 
the hall. 

“ Papa,” she said, “ I want to speak to you this morning — in pri- 
vate.” 

“Ay ! ay !” returned Mr. Yanstone. “ What about, my dear !” 

“About — ” Magdalen hesitated, searching for a satisfactory form 
of expression, and found it. “ About business, papa,” she said. 

Mr. Yanstone took his garden hat from the hall table — opened his 
eyes in mute perplexity — attempted to associate in his mind the two 
extravagantly dissimilar ideas of Magdalen and “ business ” — failed 
— and led the way resignedly into the garden. 

His daughter took his arm, and walked with him to a shady seat 
at a convenient distance from the house. She dusted the seat with 
her smart silk apron, before her father occupied it. Mr. Yanstone 
was not accustomed to such an extraordinary act of attention as 
this. He sat down, looking more puzzled than ever. Magdalen 
immediately placed herself on his knee, and rested her head com- 
fortably on his shoulder. 

“ Am I heavy, papa ?” she asked. 

“ Yes, my dear, you are,” said Mr. Yanstone — “ but not too heavy 
for me. Stop on your perch, if you like it. Well ? And what may 
this business happen to be ?” 


76 


NO NAME. 


“ It begins with a question.” 

“ Ah, indeed ? That doesn’t surprise me. Business with you 1 
sex, my dear, always begins with questions. Go on.” 

“ Papa ! do you ever intend allowing me to be married ?” 

Mr. Vanstone’s eyes opened wider and wider. The question, to 
use his own phrase, completely staggered him. 

“ This is business with a vengeance !” he said. “ Why, Magdalen ! 
what have you got in that harum-scarum head of yours now ?” 

“ I don’t exactly know, papa. Will you answer my question ?” 

“I will if I can, my dear; you rather stagger me. Well, I don’t 
know. Yes ; I suppose I must let you be married one of these days 
— if we can find a good husband for you. How hot your face is ! 
Lift it up, and let the air blow over it. You won’t? Well — have 
your own way. If talking of business means tickling your cheek 
against my whisker, I’ve nothing to say against it. Go on, my dear. 
What’s the next question ? Come to the point.” 

She was far too genuine a woman to do any thing of the sort. 
She skirted round the point, and calculated her distance to the 
nicety of a hair-breadth. 

“We were all very much surprised yesterday — were we not, papa ? 
Frank is wonderfully lucky, isn’t he ?” 

“He’s the luckiest dog I ever came across,” said Mr. Vanstone. 
“ But what has that got to do with this business of yours ? I dare 
say you see your way, Magdalen. Hang me if I can see mine !” 

She skirted a little nearer. 

“ I suppose he will make his fortune in China ?” she said. “ It’s 
a long way off, isn’t it ? Did you observe, papa, that Frank looked 
sadly out of spirits yesterday ?” 

“ I was so surprised by the news,” said Mr. Vanstone, “ and so 
staggered by the sight of old Clare’s sharp nose in my house, that I 
didn’t much notice. Now you remind me of it — yes. I don’t think 
Frank took kindly to his own good luck ; not kindly at all.” 

“ Do you wonder at that, papa ?” 

“Yes, my dear; I do, rather.” 

“ Don’t you think it’s hard to be sent away for five years, to make 
your fortune among hateful savages, and lose sight of your friends 
at home for all that long time ? Don’t you think Frank will miss 
us sadly ? Don’t you, papa ? — don’t you ?” 

“ Gently, Magdalen ! I’m a little too old for those long arms of 
yours to throttle me in fun. — You’re right, my love. Nothing in 
this world without a drawback. Frank will miss his friends in 
England : there’s no denying that.” 

“ You always liked Frank. And Frank always liked you.” 

“ Yes, yes — a good fellow ; a quiet, good fellow. Frank and I 
have always got on smoothly together.” 






' Sr: 


4< HE MIGHT MARRY ME. 











NO NAME. 


79 


“You have got on like father and son, haven’t you?” 

“ Certainly, my dear.” 

“Perhaps you will think it harder on him when he has gone 
than you think it now ?” 

“ Likely enough, Magdalen ; I don’t say no.” 

“ Perhaps you will wish he had stopped in England ? Why 
shouldn’t he stop in England, and do as well as if he went to 
China ?” 

“ My dear ! he has no prospects in England. I wish he had, for 
his own sake. I wish the lad well, with all my heart.” 

“ May I wish him well too, papa — with all my heart ?” 

“ Certainly, my love — your old playfellow — why not ? What’s 
the matter ? God bless my soul, what is the girl crying about ? 
One would think Frank was transported for life. You goose ! You 
know, as well as I do, he is going to China to make his fortune.” 

“ He doesn’t want to make his fortune — he might do much bet- 
ter.” 

“ The deuce he might ! How, I should like to know ?” 

“ I’m afraid to tell you. I’m afraid you’ll laugh at me. Will you 
promise not to laugh at me ?” 

“Any thing to please you, my dear. Yes : I promise. Now, then, 
out with it ! How might Frank do better ?” 

“ He might marry Me.” 

If the summer scene which then spread before Mr. Yanstone’s 
eyes had suddenly changed to a dreary winter view — if the trees 
had lost all their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with 
snow in an instant — his face could hardly have expressed greater 
amazement than it displayed when his daughter’s faltering voice 
spoke those four last words. He tried to look at her — but she 
steadily refused him the opportunity: she kept her face hidden 
over his shoulder. Was she in earnest? His cheek, still wet with 
her tears, answered for her. There was a long pause of silence ; 
she waited — with unaccustomed patience, she waited for him to 
speak. He roused himself, and spoke these words only: “You 
surprise me, Magdalen ; you surprise me, more than I can say.” 

At the altered tone of his voice — altered to a quiet, fatherly seri- 
ousness — Magdalen’s arms clung round him closer than before. 

“ Have I disappointed you, papa ?” she asked, faintly. “ Don’t 
say I have disappointed you ! Who am I to tell my secret to, if 
not to you ? Don’t let him go — don’t ! don’t ! You will break his 
heart. He is afraid to tell his father ; he is even afraid you might 
be angry with him. There is nobody to speak for us, except — ex- 
cept me. Oh, don’t let him go ! Don’t for his sake — ” she whis- 
pered the next words in a kiss — “ Don’t for Mine !” 

Her father’s kind face saddened ; he sighed, and patted her fail 


80 NO NAME. 

head tenderly. “ Hush, my love,” he said, almost in & whisper ; 
“ hush !” She little knew what a revelation every word, every ac- 
tion that escaped her, now opened before him. She had made him 
her grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day. She had 
romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him 
in her gowns. He had never been long enough separated from her 
to have the external changes ih his daughter forced on his attention. 
His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was 
a taller child in later years — and had taught him little more. And 
now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman 
rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom press- 
ed against his ; in the nervous thrill of her arms clasped around his 
neck. The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a woman — with 
the master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart already ! 

“ Have you thought long of this, my dear ?” he asked, as soon as 
he could speak composedly. “ Are you sure — ?” 

She answered the question before he could finish it. 

“ Sure I love him ?” she said. “ Oh what words can say Yes for 
me, as I want to say it ? I love him — !” Her voice faltered softly ; 
and her answer ended in a sigh. 

“You are very young. You and Frank, my love, are both very 
young.” 

She raised her head from his shoulder for the first time. The 
thought and its expression flashed from her at the same moment. 

“Are we much younger than you and mamma were?” she asked, 
smiling through her tears. 

She tried to lay her head back in its old position; but as she 
spoke those words, her father caught her round the waist, forced 
her, before she was aware of it, to look him in the face — and kissed 
her, with a sudden outburst of tenderness which brought the tears 
thronging back thickly into her eyes. “ Not much younger, my 
child,” he said, in low, broken tones — “ not much younger than 
your mother and I were.” He put her away from him, and rose 
from the seat, and turned his head aside quickly. “ Wait here, and 
compose yourself; I will go indoors and speak to your mother.” 
His voice trembled over those parting words ; and he left her with- 
out once looking round again. 

She waited — waited a weary time ; and he never came back. At 
last her growing anxiety urged her to follow him into the house. 
A new timidity throbbed in her heart, as she doubtingly approach- 
ed the door. Never had she seen the depths of her father’s simple 
nature stirred as they had been stirred by her confession. She al- 
most dreaded her next meeting with him. She wandered softly to 
and, fro in the hall, with a shyness unaccountable to herself ; with 
a terror of being discovered and spoken to by her sister or Miss 


NO NAME. 


81 


Garth, which made her nervously susceptible to the slightest noises 
in the house. The door of the morning-room opened while her 
back was turned toward it. She started violently, as she looked 
round and saw her father in the hall : her heart beat faster and 
faster, and she felt herself turning pale. A second look at him, as 
he came nearer, re-assured her. He was composed again, though 
not so cheerful as usual. She noticed that he advanced and spoke 
to her with a forbearing gentleness, which was more like his man- 
ner to her mother than his ordinary manner to herself. 

“ Go in, my love,” he said, opening the door for her which he had 
just closed. “Tell your mother all you have told me — and more, 
if you have more to say. She is better prepared for you than I was. 
We will take to-day to think of it, Magdalen ; and to-morrow you 
shall know, and Frank shall know, what we decide.” 

Her eyes brightened, as they looked into his face and saw the de- 
cision there already, with the double penetration of her womanhood 
and her love. Happy, and beautiful in her happiness, she put his 
hand to her lips, and went, without hesitation, into the morning- 
room. There, her father’s words had smoothed the way for her; 
there, the first shock of the surprise was past and over, and only the 
pleasure of it remained. Her mother had been her age once ; her 
mother would know how fond she was of Frank. So the coming 
interview was anticipated in her thoughts; and — except that there 
was an unaccountable appearance of restraint in Mrs. Vanstone’s 
first reception of her — was anticipated aright. After a little, the 
mother’s questions came more and more unreservedly from the 
sweet, unforgotten experience of the mother’s heart. She lived 
again through her own young days of hope and love in Magdalen’s 
replies. 

The next morning the all-important decision was announced in 
words. Mr. Vanstone took his daughter up stairs into her mother’s 
room, and there placed before her the result of the yesterday’s con- 
sultation, and of the night’s reflection which had followed it. He 
spoke with perfect kindness and self-possession of manner — but in 
fewer and more serious words than usual; and he held his wife’s 
hand tenderly in his own, all through the interview. 

He informed Magdalen that neither he nor her mother felt them- 
selves justified in blaming her attachment to Frank. It had been 
in part, perhaps, the natural consequence of her childish familiarity 
with him ; in part, also, the result of the closer intimacy between 
them which the theatrical entertainment had necessarily produced. 
At the same time, it was now the duty of her parents to put that at- 
tachment, on both sides, to a proper test — for her sake, because her 
happy future was their dearest care ; for Frank’s sake, because they 
were bound to give him the opportunity of showing himself worthy 


82 


NO NAME. 


of the trust confided in him. They were both conscious of being 
strongly prejudiced in Frank’s favor. His father’s eccentric con- 
duct had made the lad the object of their compassion and their 
care from his earliest years. He (and his younger brothers) had a b 
most filled the places to them of those other children of their own 
whom they had lost. Although they firmly believed their good 
opinion of Frank to be well founded — still, in the interest of their 
daughter’s happiness, it was necessary to put that opinion firmly 
to the proof, by fixing certain conditions, and by interposing a year 
of delay between the contemplated marriage and the present time. 

During that year, Frank was to remain at the office in London ; 
his employers being informed beforehand that family circumstances 
prevented his accepting their offer of employment in China. He 
was to consider this concession as a recognition of the attachment 
between Magdalen and himself, on certain terms only. If, during 
the year of probation, he failed to justify the confidence placed in 
him — a confidence which had led Mr. Vanstone to take unreserved- 
ly upon himself the whole responsibility of Frank’s future prospects 
— the marriage scheme was to be considered, from that moment, as 
at an end. If, on the other hand, the result to which Mr. Vanstone 
confidently looked forward, really occurred — if Frank’s probation- 
ary year proved his claim to the most precious trust that could be 
placed in his hands — then, Magdalen herself should reward him 
with all that a woman can bestow; and the future, which his 
present employers had placed before him as the result of a five 
years’ residence in China, should be realized in one year’s time, by 
the dowry of his young wife. 

As her father drew that picture of the future, the outburst of 
Magdalen’s gratitude could no longer be restrained. She was deep- 
ly touched — she spoke from her inmost heart. Mr. Vanstone wait- 
ed until his daughter and his wife were composed again ; and then 
added the last words of explanation which were now left for him to 
speak. 

“ You understand, my love,” he said, “ that I am not anticipating 
Frank’s living in idleness on his wife’s means ? My plan for him is 
that he should still profit by the interest which his present employ- 
ers take in him. Their knowledge of affairs in the City will soon 
place a good partnership at his disposal, and you will give him the 
money to buy it out of hand. I shall limit the sum, my dear, to half 
your fortune ; and the other half I shall have settled upon yourself. 
We shall all be alive and hearty, I hope” — he looked tenderly at 
his wife as he said those words — “ all alive and hearty at the year’s 
end. But if I am gone, Magdalen, it will make no difference. My 
will — made long before I ever thought of having a son-in-law — di- 
vides my fortune into two equal parts. One part goes to your 


NO NAME. 83 

mother , and the other part is fairly divided between my children. 
You will have your share on your wedding-day (and Norah will 
have hers when she marries) from my own hand, if I live ; and under 
my will if I die. There ! there ! no gloomy faces,” he said, with a 
momentary return of his every-day good spirits. “ Your mother and 
I mean to live and see Frank a great merchant. I shall leave you, 
my dear, to enlighten the son on our new projects, while I walk over 
to the cottage — ” 

He stopped ; his eyebrows contracted a little ; and he looked aside 
hesitatingly at Mrs. Yanstone. 

“ What must you do at the cottage, papa ?” asked Magdalen, after 
having vainly waited for him to finish the sentence of his own accord. 

“ I must consult Frank’s father,” he replied. “ We must not for- 
get that Mr. Clare’s consent is still wanting to settle this matter. 
And as time presses, and we don’t know what difficulties he may 
not raise, the sooner I see him the better.” 

He gave that answer in low, altered tones ; and rose from his chair 
in a half-reluctant, half-resigned manner, which Magdalen observed 
with secret alarm. 

She glanced inquiringly at her mother. To all appearance, Mrs. 
Vanstone had been alarmed by the change in him also. She looked 
anxious and uneasy ; she turned her face away on the sofa pillow — 
turned it suddenly, as if she was in pain. 

“Are you not well, mamma?” asked Magdalen. 

“ Quite well, my love,” said Mrs. Yanstone, shortly and sharply, 
without turning round. “ Leave me a little — I only want rest.” 

Magdalen went out with her father. 

“ Papa !” she whispered anxiously, as they descended the stairs: 
“ you don’t think Mr. Clare will say No ?” 

“ I can’t tell beforehand,” answered Mr. Yanstone. “ I hope he 
will say Yes.” 

“ There is no reason why he should say any thing else — is there ?” 

She put the question faintly, while he was getting his hat and 
stick ; and he did not appear to hear her. Doubting whether she 
should repeat it or not, she accompanied him as far as the garden, 
on his way to Mr. Clare’s cottage. He stopped her on the lawn, and 
s 3nt her back to the house. 

“ You have nothing on your head, my dear,” he said. “ If you 
want to be in the garden, don’t forget how hot the sun is — don’t 
come out without your hat.” 

He walked on toward the cottage. 

She waited a moment, and looked after him. She missed the 
customary flourish of his stick; she saw his little Scotch terrier, 
who had run out at his heels, barking and capering about him un- 
noticed. He was out of spirits : he was strangely out of spirits* 
What did it mean ? 


84 


NO NAMJ£. 


CHAPTER X. 

On returning to the house, Magdalen felt her shoulder suddenly 
touched from behind as she crossed the hall. She turned, and com 
fronted her sister. Before she could ask any questions, Norah con- 
fusedly addressed her, in these words : “ I beg your pardon ; I beg 
you to forgive me.” 

Magdalen looked at her sister in astonishment. All memory, on 
her side, of the sharp words which had passed between them in the 
shrubbery, was lost in the new interests that now absorbed her ; 
lost as completely as if the angry interview had never taken place. 
“ Forgive you !” she repeated, amazedly. u What for?” 

“ I have heard of your new prospects,” pursued Norah, speaking 
with a mechanical submissiveness of manner which seemed almost 
ungracious ; “ I wished to set things right between us ; I wished to 
say I was sorry for what happened. Will you forget it ? Will you 
forget and forgive what happened in the shrubbery ?” She tried to 
proceed ; but her inveterate reserve — or, perhaps, her obstinate reli- 
ance on her own opinions — silenced her at those last words. Her 
face clouded over on a sudden. Before her sister could answer her, 
she turned away abruptly and ran up stairs. 

The door of the library opened, before Magdalen could follow 
her ; and Miss Garth advanced to express the sentiments proper to 
the occasion. 

They were not the mechanically - submissive sentiments which 
Magdalen had just heard. Norah had struggled against her rooted 
distrust of Frank, in deference to the unanswerable decision of both 
her parents in his favor; and had suppressed the open expression 
of her antipathy, though the feeling itself remained unconquered. 
Miss Garth had made no such concession to the master and mistress 
of the house. She had hitherto held the position of a high authori- 
ty on all domestic questions ; and she flatly declined to get off her 
pedestal in deference to any change in the family circumstances, no 
matter how amazing or how unexpected that change might be. 

“ Pray accept my congratulations,” said Miss Garth, bristling all 
over with implied objections to Frank — “ my congratulations, and 
my apologies. When I caught you kissing Mr. Francis Clare in the 
summer-house, I had no idea you were engaged in carrying out the 
intentions of your parents. I offer no opinion on the subject. I 
merely regret my own accidental appearance in the character of an 


NO NAME. 


85 


Obstacle to the course of true-love — which appears to run smooth 
in summer-houses, whatever Shakspeare may say to the contrary. 
Consider me for the future, if you please, as an Obstacle removed. 
May you be happy !” Miss Garth’s lips closed on that last sentence 
like a trap, and Miss Garth’s eyes looked ominously prophetic into 
the matrimonial future. 

If Magdalen’s anxieties had not been far too serious to allow her 
the customary free use of her tongue, she would have been ready on 
the instant with an appropriately satirical answer. As it was, Miss 
Garth simply irritated her. “ Pooh !” she said — and ran up stairs 
to her sister’s room. 

She knocked at the door, and there was no answer. She tried the 
door, and it resisted her from the inside. The sullen unmanageable 
Norah was locked in. 

Under other circumstances, Magdalen would not have been satis- 
fied with knocking — she would have called through the door loudly 
and more loudly, till the house was disturbed, and she had carried 
her point. But the doubts and fears of the morning had unnerved 
her already. She went down stairs again softly, and took her hat 
from the stand in the hall. “ He told me to put my hat on,” she 
said to herself, with a meek filial docility which was totally out of 
her character. 

She went into the garden, on the shrubbery side; and waited 
there to catch the first sight of her father on his return. Half an 
hour passed ; forty minutes passed — and then his voice reached her 
from among the distant trees. “ Come in to heel !” she heard him 
call out loudly to the dog. Her face turned pale. “ He’s angry 
with Snap !” she exclaimed to herself in a whisper. The next min- 
ute he appeared in view ; walking rapidly, with his head down, and 
Snap at his heels in disgrace. The sudden excess of her alarm as 
she observed those ominous signs of something wrong rallied her 
natural energy, and determined her desperately on knowing the 
worst. 

She walked straight forward to meet her father. 

“ Your face tells your news,” she said, faintly. “ Mr. Clare has 
been as heartless as usual — Mr. Clare has said No ?” 

Her father turned on her with a sudden severity, so entirely un- 
paralleled in her experience of him, that she started back in down- 
right terror. 

“Magdalen!” he said; “whenever you speak of my old friend 
and neighbor again, bear this in mind : Mr. Clare has just laid me 
under an obligation which I shall remember gratefully to the end 
of my life.” 

He stopped suddenly, after saying those remarkable words. See- 
ing that he had startled her, his natural kindness prompted him 


86 


NO NAME. 


instantly to soften the reproof, and to end the suspense from which 
she was plainly suffering. “ Give me a kiss, my love,” he resumed ; 
“ and I’ll tell you in return that Mr. Clare has said — Yes.” 

She attempted to thank him ; but the sudden luxury of relief was 
too much for her. She could only cling round his neck in silence. 
He felt her trembling from head to foot, and said a few words to 
calm her. At the altered tones of his master’s voice, Snap’s meek 
.jail re-appeared fiercely from between his legs; and Snap’s lungs 
modestly tested his position with a brief experimental bark. The 
dog’s quaintly appropriate assertion of himself on his old footing 
was the interruption of all others which was best fitted to restore 
Magdalen to herself. She caught the shaggy little terrier up in her 
arms, and kissed him next. “ You darling,” she exclaimed, “ you’re 
almost as glad as I am !” She turned again to her father, with a 
look of tender reproach. “ You frightened me, papa,” she said. 
u You were so unlike yourself.” 

“ I shall be right again to-morrow, my dear. I am a little upset 
to-day.” 

“ Not by me ?” 

“ No, no.” 

“ By something you have heard at Mr. Clare’s ?” 

u Yes — nothing you need alarm yourself about; nothing that 
won’t wear off by to-morrow. Let me go now, my dear, I have a 
letter to write ; and I want to speak to your mother.” 

He left her, and went on to the house. Magdalen lingered a lit- 
tle on the lawn, to feel all the happiness of her new sensations — then 
turned away toward the shrubbery, to enjoy the higher luxury of 
communicating them. The dog followed her. She whistled, and 
clapped her hands. “Find him!” she said, with beaming eyes. 
“ Find Frank !” Snap scampered into the shrubbery, with a blood- 
thirsty snarl at starting. Perhaps he had mistaken his young mis- 
tress, and considered himself her emissary in search of a rat ? 

Meanwhile Mr. Yanstone entered the house. He met his wife 
slowly descending the stairs, and advanced to give her his arm. 
“ How has it ended ?” she asked, anxiously, as he led her to the sofa. 

“ Happily — as we hoped it would,” answered her husband. “ My 
old friend has justified my opinion of him.” 

“ Thank God !” said Mrs. Yanstone, fervently. “ Did you feel it, 
love ?” she asked, as her husband arranged the sofa pillows — “ did 
you feel it as painfully as I feared you would ?” 

“ I had a duty to do, my dear — and I did it.” 

After replying in those terms, he hesitated. Apparently, he had 
something more to say — something, perhaps, on the subject of that 
passing uneasiness of mind which had been produced by his inter- 
view with Mr. Clare, and which Magdalen’s questions had obliged 


NO NAME. 


87 


him to acknowledge. A look at his wife decided his doubts in the 
negative. He only asked if she felt comfortable; and then turned 
away to leave the room. 

“ Must you go ?” she asked. 

“ I have a letter to write, my dear.” 

“ Any thing about Frank ?” 

“No: to-morrow will do for that. A letter to Mr. Pendril. I 
want him here immediately.” 

“ Business, I suppose ?” 

“ Yes, my dear — business.” 

He went out, and shut himself into the little front room, close to 
the hall door, which was called his study. By nature and habit the 
most procrastinating of letter-writers, he now inconsistently opened 
his desk and took up the pen without a moment’s delay. His let- 
ter was long enough to occupy three pages of note-paper; it was 
written with a readiness of expression and a rapidity of hand which 
seldom characterized his proceedings when engaged over his ordi- 
nary correspondence. He wrote the address as follows : “ Immedi- 
ate — William Pendril, Esq., Serle Street, Lincoln’s Inn, London ” — 
then pushed the letter away from him, and sat at the table, drawing 
lines on the blotting-paper with his pen, lost in thought. “ No,” he 
said to himself ; “ I can do nothing more till Pendril comes.” He 
rose; his face brightened as he put the stamp on the envelope. 
The writing of the letter had sensibly relieved him, and his whole 
bearing showed it as he left the room. 

On the door-step he found Norah and Miss Garth, setting forth 
together for a walk. 

“ Which way are you going ?” he asked. “ Anywhere near the 
post-office ? I wish you would post this letter for me, Norah. It 
is very important — so important, that I hardly like to trust it to 
Thomas, as usual.” 

Norah at once took charge of the letter. 

“If you look, my dear,” continued her father, “you will see that 
I am writing to Mr. Pendril. I expect him here to-morrow after- 
noon. Will you give the necessary directions, Miss Garth ? Mr. 
Pendril will sleep here to-morrow night, and stay over Sunday. — 
Wait a minute ! To-day is Friday. Surely I had an engagement 
for Saturday afternoon ?” He consulted his pocket-book, and read 
over one of the entries, with a look of annoyance. “ Grailsea Mill, 
three o’clock, Saturday. Just the time when Pendril will be here ; 
and I must be at home to see him. How can I manage it ? Mon- 
day will be too late for my business at Grailsea. I’ll go to-day, in- 
stead ; and take my chance of catching the miller at his dinner- 
time.” He looked at his watch. “No time for driving ; I must do 
it by railway. If I go at once, I shall catch the down train at our 


88 


NO NAME. 


station, and get on to Grailsea. Take care of the letter, Norah. I 
won’t keep dinner waiting ; if the return train doesn’t suit, I’ll bor- 
row a gig, and get back in that way.” 

As he took up his hat, Magdalen appeared at the door, returning 
from her interview with Frank. The hurry of her father’s move- 
ments attracted her attention; and she asked him where he was 
going. 

u To Grailsea,” replied Mr. Vanstone. “ Your business, Miss Mag- 
dalen, has got in the way of mine — and mine must give way to it.” 

He spoke those parting words in his old hearty manner; and left 
them, with the old characteristic flourish of his trusty stick. 

“ My business !” said Magdalen. “ I thought my business was 
done.” 

Miss Garth pointed significantly to the letter in Norah’s hand. 
“Your business, beyond all doubt,” she said. u Mr. Pendril is com- 
ing to-morrow ; and Mr. Yanstone seems remarkably anxious about 
it. Law, and its attendant troubles already ! Governesses who 
look in at summer-house doors are not the only obstacles to the 
course of true-love. Parchment is sometimes an obstacle. I hope 
you may find Parchment as pliable as I am — I wish you well 
through it. Now, Norah !” 

Miss Garth’s second shaft struck as harmless as the first. Mag- 
dalen had returned to the house, a little vexed ; her interview with 
Frank having been interrupted by a messenger from Mr. Clare, sent 
to summon the son into the father’s presence. Although it had 
been agreed at the private interview between Mr. Vanstone and Mr. 
Clare that the questions discussed that morning should not be com- 
municated to the children until the year of probation was at an 
end — and although, under these circumstances Mr. Clare had noth- 
ing to tell Frank which Magdalen could not communicate to him 
much more agreeably — the philosopher was not the less resolved on 
personally informing his son of the parental concession which res- 
cued him from Chinese exile. The result was a sudden summons 
to the cottage, which startled Magdalen, but which did not appear 
to take Frank by surprise. His filial experience penetrated the 
mystery of Mr. Clare’s motives easily enough. u When my father’s 
in spirits,” he said, sulkily, “ he likes to bully me about my good 
uck. This message means that he’s going to bully me now.” 

“ Don’t go,” suggested Magdalen. 

“ I must,” rejoined Frank. “ I shall never hear the last of it if I 
don’t. He’s primed and loaded, and he means to go off. He went 
off, once, when the engineer took me ; he went off, twice, when the 
office in the City took me ; and he’s going off, thrice, now you'vt 
taken me. If it wasn’t for ycu, I should wish I had never been 
born. Yes; your father’s been kind to me, I know — and I should 


NO NAME. 


89 


have gone to China, if it hadn’t been for him. I’m sure I’m very 
much obliged. Of course, we have no right to expect any thing 
else — still it’s discouraging to keep us waiting a year, isn’t it ?” 

Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which 
even Frank submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not 
forget to set down his discontent to the right side. “ How fond he 
is of me !” she thought. “ A year’s waiting is quite a hardship to 
him.” She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had 
not heard more of Frank’s complimentary complaints. Miss Garth’s 
elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, 
was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth’s breath. What did 
Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for 
except themselves ? She never even said as much as “ Pooh !” this 
time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence, and sauntered lan- 
guidly into the morning-room to keep her mother company. She 
lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel between Frank and his 
father, with accidental interruptions in the shape of cold chicken 
and cheese-cakes. She trifled away half an hour at the piano ; and 
played, in that time, selections from the Songs of Mendelssohn, the 
Mazurkas of Chopin, the Operas of Verdi, and the Sonatas of Mo- 
zart — all of whom had combined together on this occasion, and pro- 
duced one immortal work, entitled “ Frank.” She closed the piano 
and went up to her room, to dream away the hours luxuriously in 
visions of her married future. The green shutters were closed, the 
easy-chair was pushed in front of the glass, the maid was summoned 
as usual ; and the comb assisted the mistress’s reflections, through 
the medium of the mistress’s hair, till heat and idleness asserted 
their narcotic influences together, and Magdalen fell asleep. 

It was past three o’clock when she woke. On going down stairs 
again she found her mother, Norah, and Miss Garth all sitting to- 
gether enjoying the shade and the coolness under the open portico 
in front of the house. 

Norah had the railway time-table in her hand. They had been 
discussing the chances of Mr. Vanstone’s catching the return train, 
and getting back in good time. That topic had led them, next, to 
his business errand at Grailsea — an errand of kindness, as usual; 
undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm- 
servant, and who was now hard pressed by serious pecuniary diffi- 
culties. From this they had glided insensibly into a subject often 
repeated among them, and never exhausted by repetition — the praise 
of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of the three had some experi- 
ence of her own to relate of his simple, generous nature. The con- 
versation seemed to be almost painfully interesting to his wife. She 
was too near the time of her trial now not to feel nervously sensitive 


90 


NO NAME. 


to the one subject which always held the foremost place in her 
heart. Her eyes overflowed as Magdalen joined the little group 
under the portico; her frail hand trembled as it signed to her 
youngest daughter to take the vacant chair by her side. “We were 
talking of your father,” she said, softly. “ Oh, my love, if your mar- 
ried life is only as happy — ” Her voice failed her; she put her 
handkerchief hurriedly over her face, and rested her head on Mag- 
dalen’s shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Garth, who 
at once led the conversation back to the more trivial subject of Mr. 
Yanstone’s return. “We have all been wondering,” she said, with 
a significant look at Magdalen, “ whether your father will leave 
Grailsea in time to catch the train — or whether he will miss it, and 
be obliged to drive back. What do you say ?” 

“ I say, papa will miss the train,” replied Magdalen, taking Miss 
Garth’s hint with her customary quickness. “ The last thing he 
attends to at Grailsea will be the business that brings him there. 
Whenever he has business to do, he always puts it off to the last 
moment, doesn’t he, mamma?” 

The question roused her mother exactly as Magdalen had intend- 
ed it should. “Not when his errand is an errand of kindness,” said 
Mrs. Yanstone. “ He has gone to help the miller in a very pressing 
difficulty — ” 

“ And don’t you know what he’ll do ?” persisted Magdalen. 
“ He’ll romp with the miller’s children, and gossip with the mother, 
and hob-and-nob with the father. At the last moment, when he 
has got five minutes left to catch the train, he’ll say , 4 Let’s go into 
the counting-house and look at the books.’ He’ll find the books 
dreadfully complicated ; he’ll suggest sending for an accountant ; 
he’ll settle the business off-hand, by lending the money in the mean 
time ; he’ll jog back comfortably in the miller’s gig; and he’ll tell 
us all how pleasant the lanes were in the cool of the evening.” 

The little character-sketch which these words drew was too faith- 
ful a likeness not to be recognized. Mrs. Yanstone showed her ap- 
preciation of it by a smile. “ When your father returns,” she said, 
“ we will put your account of his proceedings to the test. I think,” 
she continued, rising languidly from her chair, “ I had better go in- 
doors again now, and rest on the sofa till he comes back.” 

The little group under the portico broke up. Magdalen slipped 
away into the garden to hear Frank’s account of the interview with 
his father. The other three ladies entered the house together. 
When Mrs. Yanstone was comfortably established on the sofa, 
Norah and Miss Garth left her to repose, and withdrew to the li- 
brary to look over the last parcel of books from London. 

It was a quiet, cloudless summer’s day. The heat w r as tempered 
by a light western breeze ; the voices of laborers at work in a field 


NO NAME. 


91 


near reached the house cheerfully; the clock- bell of the village 
church as it struck the quarters, floated down the wind with a 
clearer ring, a louder melody than usual. Sweet odors from field 
and flower-garden, stealing in at the open windows, filled the house 
with their fragrance ; and the birds in Norah’s aviary up stairs sang 
the song of their happiness exultingly in the sun. 

As the church clock struck the quarter past four, the morning- 
room door opened ; and Mrs. Vanstone crossed the hall alone. She 
had tried vainly to compose herself. She was too restless to lie 
still and sleep. For a moment she directed her steps toward the 
portico — then turned, and looked about her, doubtful where to go, 
or what to do next. While she was still hesitating, the half-open 
door of her husband’s study attracted her attention. The room 
seemed to be in sad confusion. Drawers were left open ; coats and 
hats, account-books and papers, pipes and fishing-rods were all scat- 
tered about together. She went in, and pushed the door to — but so 
gently that she still left it ajar. “ It will amuse me to put his room 
to rights,” she thought to herself. “ I should like to do something 
for him before I am down on my bed, helpless.” She began to ar- 
range his drawers, and found his banker’s book lying open in one 
of them. u My poor dear, how T careless he is ! The servants might 
have seen all his affairs, if I had not happened to have looked in.” 
She set the drawers right ; and then turned to the multifarious lit- 
ter on a side-table. A little old-fashioned music-book appeared 
among the scattered papers, with her name written in it, in faded 
ink. She blushed like a young girl in the first happiness of the 
discovery. “ How good he is to me ! He remembers my poor old 
music-book, and keeps it for my sake.” As she sat down by the ta- 
ble and opened the book, the by-gone time came back to her in all its 
tenderness. The clock struck the half-hour, struck the three-quar- 
ters — and still she sat there, with the music-book on her lap, dream- 
ing happily over the old songs ; thinking gratefully of the golden 
days when his hand had turned the pages for her, when his voice 
had whispered the words which, no woman’s memory ever forgets. 

Norah roused herself from the volume she was reading, and 
glanced at the clock on the library mantel-piece. 

“ If papa comes back by the railway,” she said, “ he will be here 
in ten minutes.” 

Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily from the book which 
was just dropping out of her hand. 

“ I don’t think he will come by train,” she replied. “ He will jog 
dack— as Magdalen flippantly expressed it — in the miller’s gig.” 

As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door. 
The footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth. 


92 


NO NAME. 


“A person wishes to see you, ma’am.” 

“ Who is it ?” 

“ I don’t know, ma’am. A stranger to me — a respectable-looking 
man — afid he said he particularly wished to see you.” 

Miss Garth went out into the hall. The footman closed the libra- 
ry door after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs. 

The man stood just inside the door, on the mat. His eyes wan- 
dered, his face was pale — he looked ill ; he looked frightened. He 
trifled nervously with his cap, and shifted it backward and forward, 
from one hand to the other. 

“ You wanted to see me ?” said Miss Garth. 

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. — You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are 
you ?” 

“ Certainly not. I am Miss Garth. Why do you ask the ques- 
tion ?” 

u I am employed in the clerk’s office at Grailsea Station — ” 

“ Yes t” 

“ I am sent here — ” 

He stopped again. His wandering eyes looked down at the mat, 
and his restless hands wrung his cap harder and harder. He mois- 
tened his dry lips, and tried once more. 

“ I am sent here on a very serious errand.” 

“ Serious to me 

“ Serious to all in this house.” 

Miss Garth took one step nearer to him — took one steady look at 
his face. She turned cold in the summer heat. “ Stop !” she said, 
with a sudden distrust, and glanced aside anxiously at the door of 
the morning-room. It was safely closed. “ Tell me the worst ; and 
don’t speak loud. There has been an accident. Where ?” 

u On the railway. Close to Grailsea Station.” 

“ The up-train to London ?” 

u No : the down-train at one-fifty — ” 

“ God Almighty help us ! The train Mr. Vanstone traveled by to 
Grailsea ?” 

“ The same. I was sent here by the up-train : the line was just 
cleared in time for it. They wouldn’t write — they said I must see 
‘ Miss Garth,’ and tell her. There are seven passengers badly hurt ; 
and two — ” 

The next word failed on his lips ; he raised his hand in the dead 
silence. With eyes that opened wide in horror, he raised his hand 
and pointed over Miss Garth’s shoulder. 

She turned a little, and looked back. 

Face to face with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood 
the mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched 
fast mechanically in both hands. She stood, the spectre of herself. 


NO NAME. 


93 


With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her 
voice, she repeated the man’s last words : 

“ Seven passengers badly hurt ; and two — ” 

Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold ; the book dropped from 
them ; she sank forward heavily. Miss Garth caught her before she 
fell — caught her, and turned upon the man, with the wife’s swoon- 
ing body in her arms, to hear the husband’s fate. 

u The harm is done,” she said ; “ you may speak out. Is he 
wounded, or dead ?” 

“ Dead.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

The sun sank lower; the western breeze floated cool and fresh 
into the house. As the evening advanced, the cheerful ring of the 
village clock came nearer and nearer. Field and flower-garden felt 
the influence of the hour, and shed their sweetest fragrance. The 
birds in Norah’s aviary sunned themselves in the evening stillness, 
and sang their farewell gratitude to the dying day. 

Staggered in its progress for a time only, the pitiless routine of 
the house went horribly on its daily way. The panic-stricken serv- 
ants took their blind refuge in the duties proper to the hour. The 
footman softly laid the table for dinner. The maid sat waiting in 
senseless doubt, with the hot- water jugs for the bedrooms ranged 
near her in their customary row. The gardener, who had been or- 
dered to come to his master, with vouchers for money that he had 
paid in excess of his instructions, said his character was dear to 
him, and left the vouchers at his appointed time. Custom that 
never yields, and Death that never spares, met on the wreck of hu- 
man happiness — and Death gave way. 

Heavily the thunder-clouds of Affliction had gathered over the 
house — heavily, but not at their darkest yet. At five, that evening, 
the shock of the calamity had struck its blow. Before another hour 
had passed, the disclosure of the husband’s sudden death was fol- 
lowed by the suspense of the wife’s mortal peril. She lay helpless 
on her widowed bed ; her own life, and the life of her unborn child, 
trembling in the balance. 

But one mind still held possession of its resources — but one guid- 
ing spirit now moved helpfully in the house of mourning. 

If Miss Garth’s early days had been passed as calmly and as hap- 
pily as her later life at Combe-Raven, she might have sunk under 
the cruel necessities of the time. But the governess’s youth had 
been tried in the ordeal of family affliction ; and she met her terri- 
ble duties with the steady courage of a woman who had learned to 


94 


NO NAME. 


suffer. Alone, she had faced the trial of telling the daughters that 
they were fatherless. Alone, she now struggled to sustain them, 
when the dreadful certainty of their bereavement was at last im- 
pressed on their minds. 

Her least anxiety was for the elder sister. The agony of Norah’s 
grief had forced its way outward to the natural relief of tears. It 
was not so with Magdalen. Tearless and speechless, she sat in the 
room where the revelation of her father’s death had first reached 
her ; her face, unnaturally petrified by the sterile sorrow of old age 
— a white, changeless blank, fearful to look at. Nothing roused, 
nothing melted her. She only said, “Don’t speak to me; don’t 
touch me. Let me bear it by myself ” — and fell silent again. The 
first great grief which had darkened the sisters’ lives had, as it 
seemed, changed their every-day characters already. 

The twilight fell, and faded ; and the summer night came bright- 
ly. As the first carefully shaded light was kindled in the sick- 
room, the physician, who had been summoned from Bristol, arrived 
to consult with the medical attendant of the family. He could give 
no comfort: he could only say, “We must try, and hope. The 
shock which struck her, when she overheard the news of her hus- 
band’s death, has prostrated her strength at the time when she 
needed it most. No effort to preserve her shall be neglected. I 
will stay here for the night.” 

He opened one of the windows to admit more air as he spoke. 
The view overlooked the drive in front of the house, and the road 
outside. Little groups of people were standing before the lodge- 
gates, looking in. “ If those persons make any noise,” said the doc- 
tor, “they must be warned away.” There was no need to warn 
them : they were only the laborers who had worked on the dead 
man’s property, and here and there some women and children from 
the village. They were all thinking of him — some talking of him 
— and it quickened their sluggish minds to look at his house. The 
gentlefolks thereabouts were mostly kind to them (the men said), 
but none like Mm. The women whispered to each other of his 
comforting ways, when he came into their cottages. “ He was a 
cheerful man, poor soul ; and thoughtful of us, too : he never came 
in and stared at meal-times ; the rest of ’em help us, and scold us — 
all he ever said was, better luck next time.” So they stood, and 
talked of him, and looked at his house and grounds, and moved off 
clumsily by twos and threes, with the dim sense that the sight of 
his pleasant face would never comfort them again. The dullest 
head among them knew, that night, that the hard ways of poverty 
would be all the harder to walk on, now he was gone. 

A little later, news was brought to the bed-chamber door that old 
Mr. Clare had come alone to the house, and was waiting in the hall 


NO NAME. 


95 


below, to hear what the physician said. Miss Garth was not able 
to go down to him herself : she sent a message. He said to the 
servant, “ I’ll come and ask again, in two hours’ time ” — and went 
out slowly. Unlike other men in all things else, the sudden death 
of his old friend had produced no discernible change in him. The 
feeling implied in the errand of inquiry that had brought him to 
the house was the one betrayal of human sympathy w T hich escaped 
the rugged, impenetrable old man. 

He came again, when the two hours had expired ; and this time 
Miss Garth saw him. 

They shook hands in silence. She waited; she nerved herself 
to hear him speak of his lost friend. No : he never mentioned the 
dreadful accident, he never alluded to the dreadful death. He said 
these words, u Is she better, or worse?” and said no more. Was 
the tribute of his grief for the husband sternly suppressed under 
the expression of his anxiety for the wife ? The nature of the man, 
unpliably antagonistic to the world and the world’s customs, might 
justify some such interpretation of his conduct as this. He repeat- 
ed his question, “ Is she better, or worse ?” 

Miss Garth answered him : 

“ No better ; if there is any change, it is a change for the worse.” 

They spoke those words at the window of the morning-room 
which opened on the garden. Mr. Clare paused, after hearing the 
reply to his inquiry, stepped out on to the walk, then turned on a 
sudden, and spoke again : 

“ Has the doctor given her up ?” he asked. 

“He has not concealed from us that she is in danger. We can 
only pray for her.” 

The old man laid his hand on Miss Garth’s arm as she answered 
him, and looked her attentively in the face. 

“You believe in prayer?” he said. 

Miss Garth drew sorrowfully back from him. 

“ You might have spared me that question, sir, at such a time as 
this.” 

He took no notice of her answer ; his eyes were still fastened on 
her face. 

“ Pray !” he said. “ Pray as you never prayed before, for the pres- 
ervation of Mrs. Yanstone’s life.” 

He left her. His voice and manner implied some unutterable 
dread of the future, which his words had not confessed. Miss Garth 
followed him into the garden, and called to him. He heard her, but 
he never turned back : he quickened his pace, as if he desired to 
avoid her. She watched him across the lawn in the warm summer 
moonlight. She saw his white, withered hands, saw them suddenly 
against the black background of the shrubbery, raised and wrung 


NO NAME. 


96 


above his head. They dropped — the trees shrouded him in dark* 
ness — he was gone. 

Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman, with the burden 
on her mind of one anxiety more. 

It was then past eleven o’clock. Some little time had elapsed 
since she had seen the sisters and spoken to them. The inquiries 
she addressed to one of the female servants only elicited the infor- 
mation that they were both in their rooms. She delayed her return 
to the mother’s bedside to say her parting words of comfort to the 
daughters, before she left them for the night. Norah’s room was 
the nearest. She softly opened the door and looked in. The kneel- 
ing figure by the bedside told her that God’s help had found the 
fatherless daughter in her affliction. Grateful tears gathered in her 
eyes as she looked : she softly closed the door, and went on to Mag- 
dalen’s room. There doubt stayed her feet at the threshold, and 
she waited for a moment before going in. 

A sound in the room caught her ear — the monotonous rustling of 
a woman’s dress, now distant, now near ; passing without cessation 
from end to end over the floor — a sound which told her that Mag- 
dalen was pacing to and fro in the secrecy of her own chamber. 
Miss Garth knocked. The rustling ceased ; the door was opened, 
and the sad young face confronted her, locked in its cold despair ; 
the large light eyes looked mechanically into hers, as vacant and as 
tearless as ever. 

That look wrung the heart of the faithful woman, who had trained 
her and loved her from a child. She took Magdalen tenderly in 
her arms. 

“ Oh, my love,” she said, “ no tears yet ! Oh, if I could see you as 
I have seen Norah ! Speak to me, Magdalen — try if you can speak 
to me.” 

She tried, and spokfe : 

“ Norah,” she said, u feels no remorse. He was not serving Norah’s 
interests when he went to his death : he was serving mine.” 

With that terrible answer, she put her cold lips to Miss Garth’s 
cheek. 

“ Let me bear it by myself,” she said, and gently closed the door. 

Again Miss Garth waited at the threshold, and again the sound 
of the rustling dress passed to and fro — now far, now near — to and 
fro with a cruel, mechanical regularity, that chilled the warmest 
sympathy, and daunted the boldest hope. 

The night passed. It had been agreed, if no change for the bet- 
ter showed itself by the morning, that the London physician whom 
Mrs. Yanstone had consulted some months since should be sum- 
moned to the house on the next day. No change for the better ap- 
peared, and the physician was sent for. 


HO NAME. 


9 ? 


As the morning advanced, Frank came to make inquiries, from 
the cottage. Had Mr. Clare intrusted to his son the duty which he 
had personally performed on the previous day, through reluctance 
to meet Miss Garth again after what he had said to her ? It might 
be so. Frank could throw no light on the subject ; he was not in 
his father’s confidence. He looked pale and bewildered. His first 
inquiries after Magdalen showed how his weak nature had been 
shaken by the catastrophe. He was not capable of framing his own 
questions : the words faltered on his lips, and the ready tears came 
into his eyes. Miss Garth’s heart warmed to him for the first time. 
Grief has this that is noble in it — it accepts all sympathy, come 
whence it may. She encouraged the lad by a few kind words, and 
took his hand at parting. 

Before noon, Frank returned with a second message. His father 
desired to know whether Mr. Pendril was not expected at Combe- 
Raven on that day. If the lawyer’s arrival was looked for, Frank 
was directed to be in attendance at the station, and to take him 
to the cottage, where a bed would be placed at his disposal. This 
message took Miss Garth by surprise. It showed that Mr. Clare 
had been made acquainted with his dead friend’s purpose of send- 
ing for Mr. Pendril. Was the old man’s thoughtful offer of hospi- 
tality another indirect expression of the natural human distress 
which he perversely concealed? or was he aware of some secret 
necessity for Mr. Pendril’s presence, of which the bereaved family 
had been kept in total ignorance ? Miss Garth was too heart-sick 
and hopeless to dwell on either question. She told Frank that Mr, 
Pendril had been expected at three o’clock, and sent him back with 
her thanks. 

Shortly after his departure, such anxieties on Magdalen’s account 
as her mind was now able to feel were relieved by better news than 
her last night’s experience had inclined her to hope for. Norah’s 
influence had been exerted to rouse her sister ; and Norah’s patient 
sympathy had set the prisoned grief free. Magdalen had suffered 
severely — suffered inevitably, with such a nature as hers — in the 
effort that relieved her. The healing tears had not come gently : 
they had burst from her with a torturing, passionate vehemence — 
but Norah had never left her till the struggle was over, and the 
calm had come. These better tidings encouraged Miss Garth to 
Withdraw to her own room, and to take the rest which she needed 
sorely. Worn out in body and mind, she slept from sheer exhaus- 
tion — slept heavily and dreamless for some hours. It was between 
three and four in the afternoon, when she was roused by one of the 
female servants. The woman had a note in her hand — a note left by 
Mr. Clare the younger, with a message desiring that it might be de- 
livered to Miss Garth immediatelv. The name written in the lower 


98 


NO NAME. 


corner of the envelope was w William Pendril.” The lawyer had 
arrived. 

Miss Garth opened the note. After a few first sentences of sym- 
pathy and condolence, the writer announced his arrival at Mr. 
Clare’s ; and then proceeded, apparently in his professional capacity, 
to make a very startling request. 

“If,” he wrote, “any change for the better in Mrs. Yanstone 
should take place — whether it is only an improvement for the time, 
or whether it is the permanent improvement for which we all hope 
— in either case I entreat you to let me know of it immediately. 
It is of the last importance that I should see her, in the event of 
her gaining strength enough to give me her attention for five 
minutes, and of her being able at the expiration of that time to sign 
her name. May I beg that you will communicate my request, in 
the strictest confidence, to the medical men in attendance ? They 
will understand, and you will understand, the vital importance I at- 
tach to this interview, when I tell you that I have arranged to de- 
fer to it all other business claims on me ; and that I hold myself in 
readiness to obey your summons, at any hour of the day or night.” 

In those terms the letter ended. Miss Garth read it twice over. 
At the second reading, the request which the lawyer now addressed 
to her, and the farewell words which had escaped Mr. Clare’s lips 
the day before, connected themselves vaguely in her mind. There 
was some other serious interest in suspense, known to Mr. Pendril 
and known to Mr. Clare, besides the first and foremost interest of 
Mrs. Yanstone’s recovery. Whom did it affect? The children? 
Were they threatened by some new calamity which their mother’s 
signature might avert ? What did it mean ? Did it mean that Mr. 
Yanstone had died without leaving a will ? 

In her distress and confusion of mind, Miss Garth was incapable 
of reasoning with herself, as she might have reasoned at a happier 
time. She hastened to the antechamber of Mrs. Yanstone’s room; 
and, after explaining Mr. Pendril’s position toward the family, 
placed his letter in the hands of the medical men. They both an- 
swered, without hesitation, to the same purpose. Mrs. Yanstone’s 
condition rendered any such interview as the lawyer desired a total 
impossibility. If she rallied from her present prostration, Miss 
Garth should be at once informed of the improvement. In the 
mean time, the answer to Mr. Pendril might be conveyed in one 
word — Impossible. 

“You see what importance Mr. Pendril attaches to the inter- 
view ?” said Miss Garth. 

Yes : both the doctors saw it. 

“ My mind is lost and confused, gentlemen, in this dreadful sus- 
pense. Can you either of you guess why the signature is wanted ? 


NO NAME. 


99 

r orwhat the object of the interview may be ? I have only seen Mr. 
Pendril when he has come here on former visits : I have no claim 
to justify me in questioning him. Will you look at the letter again ? 
Do you think it implies that Mr. Yanstone has never made a will ?” 

“I think it can hardly imply that,” said one of the doctors. 
“But, even supposing Mr. Vanstone to have died intestate, the law 
takes due care of the interests of his widow and his children — ” 

“Would it do so,” interposed the other medical man, “if the 
property happened to be in land ?” 

“ I am not sure in that case. Do you happen to know, Miss 
Garth, whether Mr. Yanstone’s property was in money or in land ?” 

“ In money,” replied Miss Garth. “ I have heard him say so on 
more than one occasion.” 

“ Then I can relieve your mind by speaking from my own experi- 
ence. The law, if he has died intestate, gives a third of his property 
to his widow, and divides the rest equally among his children.” 

“ But if Mrs. Yanstone — ?” 

“ If Mrs. Yanstone should die,” pursued the doctor, completing 
the question which Miss Garth had not the heart to conclude for 
herself, “ I believe I am right in telling you that the property would, 
as a matter of legal course, go to the children. Whatever necessi- 
ty there may be for the interview which Mr. Pendril requests, I can 
see no reason for connecting it with the question of Mr. Yanstone’s 
presumed intestacy. But, by all means, put the question, for the 
satisfaction of your own mind, to Mr. Pendril himself.” 

Miss Garth withdrew to take the course which the doctor advised. 
After communicating to Mr. Pendril the medical decision which, 
thus far, refused him the interview that he sought, she added a 
brief statement of the legal question she had put to the doctors; 
and hinted delicately at her natural anxiety to be informed of the 
motives which had led the lawyer to make his request. The answer 
she received was guarded in the extreme : it did not impress her 
with a favorable opinion of Mr. Pendril. He confirmed the doctors’ 
interpretation o x ' the law in general terms only; expressed his in- 
tention of waiting at the cottage, in the hope that a change for the 
better might yet enable Mrs. Yanstone to see him ; and closed his 
letter without the slightest explanation of his motives, and without 
a word of reference to the question of the existence, or the non-ex- 
istence, of Mr. Yanstone’s will. 

The marked caution of the lawyer’s reply dwelt uneasily on Miss 
Garth’s mind, until the long-expected event of the day recalled all 
her thoughts to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Yanstone’s ac- 
count. 

Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He 
watched long by the bedside of the suffering woman ; he remained 


100 


NO NAME. 


longer still in consultation with his medical brethren ; he went back 
again to the sick-room, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to 
communicate to her the opinion at which he had arrived. 

When he came out into the antechamber for the Second time, he 
silently took a chair by her side. She looked in his face ; and the 
last faint hope died in her before he opened his lips. 

“ I must speak the hard truth,” he said, gently. “ All that can be 
done has been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most, will 
end your suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that time — I grieve 
to say it — you must prepare yourself for the worst.” 

Those words said all : they were prophetic of the end. 

The night passed ; and she lived through it. The next day came ; 
; and she lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the 
tidings of her husband’s death had dealt the mortal blow. When 
the hour came round again, the mercy of God let her go to him in 
the better world. Her daughters were kneeling at the bedside as 
her spirit passed away. She left them unconscious of their pres- 
ence ; mercifully and happily insensible to the pang of the last fare- 
well. 

Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane, and the 
sunset was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, 
the light of the frail little life — faint and feeble from the first — flick- 
ered and went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay, 
that night, on the same bed. The Angel of Death had done his 
awful bidding ; and the two Sisters were left alone in the world. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Earlier than usual, on the morning of Thursday, the twenty- 
third of July, Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and 
stepped out into the little strip of garden attached to his residence. 

After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he 
was joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal ap- 
pearance was totally devoid of marked character of any kind ; whose 
inexpressive face and conventionally-quiet manner presented noth- 
ing that attracted approval, and nothing that inspired dislike. This 
was Mr. Pendril — this was the man on whose lips hung the future 
of the orphans at Combe-Raven. 

“ The time is getting on,” he said, looking toward the shrubbery, 
as he joined Mr. Clare. “My appointment with Miss Garth is for 
.eleven o’clock : it only wants ten minutes of the hour.” 

“Are you to see her alone ?” asked Mr. Clare. 

“ I left Miss Garth to decide— -after warning her, first of all, that 


NO NAME. 


101 


the circumstances I am compelled to disclose are of a very serious 
nature.” 

“And has she decided ?” 

“ She writes me word that she mentioned my appointment, and 
repeated the warning I had given her to both the daughters. The 
elder of the two shrinks — and who can wonder at it? — from any 
discussion connected with the future, which requires her presence 
so soon as the day after the funeral. The younger one appears to 
have expressed no opinion on the subject. As I understand it, she 
suffers herself to be passively guided by her sister’s example. My 
interview, therefore, will take place with Miss Garth alone — and it 
is a very great relief to me to know it.” 

He spoke the last words with more emphasis and energy than 
seemed habitual to him. Mr. Clare stopped, and looked at his guest 
attentively. 

u You are almost as old as I am, sir,” he said. u Has all your long 
experience as a lawyer not hardened you yet ?” 

“I never knew how little it had hardened me,” replied Mr. Pen- 
dril, quietly, “ until I returned from London yesterday to attend the 
funeral. I was not warned that the daughters had resolved on fol- 
lowing their parents to the grave. I think their presence made the 
closing scene of this dreadful calamity doubly painful, and doubly 
touching. You saw how the great concourse of people were moved 
by it — and they were in ignorance of the truth ; they knew nothing 
of the cruel necessity which takes me to the house this morning. 
The sense of that necessity — and the sight of those poor girls at the 
time when I felt my hard duty toward them most painfully — shook 
me, as a man of my years and my way of life is not often shaken by 
any distress in the present, or any suspense in the future. I have 
not recovered it this morning : I hardly feel sure of myself yet.” 

“A man’s composure — when he is a man like you — comes with 
the necessity for it,” said Mr. Clare. “You must have had duties 
to perform as trying in their way as the duty that lies before you 
this morning.” 

Mr. Pendril shook his head. “ Many duties as serious ; many sto- 
ries more romantic. No duty so trying, no story so hopeless, as this.” 

With those words they parted. Mr. Pendril left the garden for 
the shrubbery path which led to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned 
to the cottage. 

On reaching the passage, he looked through the open door of his 
little parlor, and saw Frank sitting there in idle wretchedness, with 
his head resting wearily on his hand. 

“ I have had an answer from your employers in London,” said Mr. 
Clare. “ In consideration of what has happened, they will allow the 
offer they made you to stand over for another month,” 


102 


NO NAME. 


Frank changed color, and rose nervously from his chair. 

“Are my prospects altered?” he asked. “Are Mr. Vanstone’s 
plans for me not to be carried out? He told Magdalen his will 
had provided for her. She repeated his words to me; she said I 
ought to know all that his goodness and generosity had done for 
both of us. How can his death make a change ? Has any thing 
happened ?” 

“Wait till Mr. Pendril comes back from Combe-Raven,” said his 
father. “ Question him — don’t question me.” 

The ready tears rose in Frank’s eyes. 

“You won’t be hard on me?” he pleaded, faintly. “You won’t 
expect me to go back to London without seeing Magdalen first ?” 

Mr. Clare looked thoughtfully at his son, and considered a little 
before he replied. 

“You may dry your eyes,” he said. “You shall see Magdalen 
before you go back.” 

He left the room, after making that reply, and withdrew to his 
study. The books lay ready to his hand as usual. He opened one 
of them, and set himself to read in the customary manner. But 
his attention wandered; and his eyes strayed away from time to 
time, to the empty chair opposite — the chair in which his old friend 
and gossip had sat and wrangled with him good-humoredly for 
many and many a year past. After a struggle with himself, he 
closed the book. “D — n the chair!” he said: “it will talk of 
him; and I must listen.” He reached down his pipe from the 
• wall, and mechanically filled it with tobacco. His hand shook, 
his eyes wandered back to the old place ; and a heavy sigh came 
from him unwillingly. That empty chair was the only earthly ar- 
gument for which he had no answer: his heart owned its defeat, 
and moistened his eyes in spite of him. “ He has got the better 
of me at last,” said the rugged old man. “ There is one weak place 
left in me still — and lie has found it.” 

Meanwhile Mr. Pendril entered the shrubbery, and followed the 
path which led to the lonely garden and the desolate house. He 
was met at the door by the man-servant, who was apparently wait- 
ing in expectation of his arrival. 

“ I have an appointment with Miss Garth. Is she ready to see 
me ?” 

“ Quite ready, sir.” 

“ Is she alone ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“In the room which was Mr. Vanstone’s study ?” 

“ In that room, sir.” 

The servant opened the door, and Mr. Pendril went in. 

The governess stood alone at the study window. The morning 


NO NAME. 


103 


was oppressively hot, and she threw up the lower sash to admit 
more air into the room, as Mr. Pendril entered it. 

They bowed to each other with a formal politeness, which betray* 
ed on either side an uneasy sense of restraint. Mr. Pendril was one 
of the many men who appear superficially to the worst advantage, 
under the influence of strong mental agitation which it is necessary 
for them to control. Miss Garth, on her side, had not forgotten tho 
ungraciously guarded terms in which the lawyer had replied to her 
letter ; and the natural anxiety which she had felt on the subject of 
the interview was not relieved by any favorable opinion of the man 
who sought it. As they confronted each other in the silence of the 
summer’s morning — both dressed in black; Miss Garth’s hard fea- 
tures, gaunt and haggard with grief; the lawyer’s cold, colorless 
face, void of all marked expression, suggestive of a business embar- 
rassment and of nothing more — it would have been hard to find 
two persons less attractive externally to any ordinary sympathies 
than the two who had now met together, the one to tell, the other 
to hear, the secrets of the dead. 

“ I am sincerely sorry, Miss Garth, to intrude on you at such a 
time as this. But circumstances, as I have already explained, leave 
me no other choice.” 

“ Will you take a seat, Mr. Pendril ? You wished to see me in 
this room, I believe ?” 

“ Only in this room, because Mr. Vanstone’s papers are kept here, 
and I may find it necessary to refer to some of them.” 

After that formal interchange of question and answer, they sat 
down on either side of a table placed close under the window. One 
waited to speak, the other waited to hear. There was a momentary 
silence. Mr. Pendril broke it by referring to the young ladies, with 
the customary inquiries, and the customary expressions of sympathy. 
Miss Garth answered him with the same ceremony, in the same con- 
ventional tone. There was a second pause of silence. The hum- 
ming of flies among the evergreen shrubs under the window pene- 
trated drowsily into the room ; and the tramp of a heavy-footed 
cart-horse, plodding along the high-road beyond the garden, was 
as plainly audible in the stillness as if it had been night. 

The lawyer roused his flagging resolution, and spoke to the pur- 
pose when he spoke next. 

“You have some reason, Miss Garth,” he began, “to feel not 
quite satisfied with my past conduct toward you, in one particular. 
During Mrs. Yanstone’s fatal illness, you addressed a letter to me, 
making certain inquiries ; which, while she lived, it was impossible 
for me to answer. Her deplorable death releases me from the re- 
straint which I had imposed on myself, and permits — or, more 
properly, obliges me to speak. You shall know what serious rea* 


104 


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sons I had for waiting day and night in the hope of obtaining that 
interview which unhappily never took place ; and in justice to Mr. 
Vanstone’s memory, your own eyes shall inform you that he made 
his will.” 

He rose; unlocked a little iron safe in the corner of the room; 
and returned to the table with some folded sheets of paper, which 
he spread open under Miss Garth’s eyes. When she had read the 
first words, “ In the name of God, Amen,” he turned the sheet, and 
pointed to the end of the next page. She saw the well-known sig- 
nature : “ Andrew Vanstone.” She saw the customary attestations 
of the two witnesses ; and the date of the document, reverting to a 
period of more than five years since. Having thus convinced her 
of the formality of the will, the lawyer interposed before she could 
question him, and addressed her in these words : 

“ I must not deceive you,” he said. “ I have my own reasons for 
producing this document.” 

“ What reasons, sir ?” 

“You shall hear them. When you are in possession of the truth, 
these pages may help to preserve your respect for Mr. Vanstone’s 
memory — ” 

Miss Garth started back in her chair. 

“ What do you mean ?” she asked, with a stern straightforward- 
ness. 

He took no heed of the question ; he went on as if she had not 
interrupted him. 

“ I have a second reason,” he continued, “ for showing you the 
will. If I can prevail on you to read certain clauses in it, under my 
superintendence, you will make your own discovery of the circum- 
stances which I am here to disclose — circumstances so painful, that 
I hardly know how to communicate them to you with my own lips.” 

Miss Garth looked him steadfastly in the face. 

“ Circumstances, sir, which affect the dead parents, or the living 
children ?” 

“Which affect the dead and the living both,” answered the law- 
yer. “ Circumstances, I grieve to say, which involve the future of 
Mr. Yanstone’s unhappy daughters.” 

“ Wait,” said Miss Garth, “ wait a little.” She pushed her gray 
hair back from her temples, and struggled with the sickness of 
heart, the dreadful faintness of terror, which would have overpower- 
ed a younger or a less resolute woman. Her eyes, dim with watch- 
ing, weary with grief, searched the lawyer’s unfathomable face. 
“ His unhappy daughters ?” she repeated to herself, vacantly. “ He 
talks as if there was some worse calamity than the calamity which 
has made them orphans.” She paused once more ; and rallied Her 
sinking courage. “ I will not make your hard duty, sir, more pain' 



HER EYES, 


DIM WITH WATCHING, WEARY WITH GRIEF, SEARCHED THE 
LAWYERS UNFATHOMABLE FACE. 




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107 


fill to you than I can help,” she resumed. “ Show me the place in 
the will. Let me read it, and know the worst.” 

Mr. Pendril turned back to the first page, and pointed to a certain 
place in the cramped lines of writing. “ Begin here,” he said. 

She tried to begin ; she tried to follow his finger, as she had fol- 
lowed it already to the signatures and the dates. But her senses 
seemed to share the confusion of her mind — the words mingled to- 
gether, and the lines swam before her eyes. 

“ I can’t follow you,” she said. “ You must tell it, or read it to 
me.” She pushed her chair back from the table, and tried to col- 
lect herself. “ Stop !” she exclaimed, as the lawyer, with visible 
hesitation and reluctance, took the papers in his own hand. “ One 
question, first. Does his will provide for his children ?” 

“ His will provided for them, when he made it.” 

“ When he made it !” (Something of her natural bluntness broke 
out in her manner as she repeated the answer.) “ Does it provide 
for them now ?” 

“ It does not.” 

She snatched the will from his hand, and threw it into a corner 
of the room. “ You mean well,” she said ; “ you wish to spare me 
— but you are wasting your time, and my strength. If the will is 
useless, there let it lie. Tell me the truth, Mr. Pendril — tell it plain- 
ly, tell it instantly, in your own words !” 

He felt that it would be useless cruelty to resist that appeal. 
There was no merciful alternative but to answer it on the spot. 

“ I must refer you to the spring of the present year, Miss Garth. 
Do you remember the fourth of March ?” 

Her attention wandered again ; a thought seemed to have struck 
her at the moment when he spoke. Instead of answering his in- 
quiry, she put a question of her own. 

“ Let me break the news to myself,” she said — “ let me anticipate 
you, if I can. His useless will, the terms in which you speak of his 
daughters, the doubt you seem to feel of my continued respect for 
his memory, have opened a new view to me. Mr. Yanstone has died 
a ruined man — is that what you had to tell me ?” 

“ Far from it. Mr. Yanstone has died, leaving a fortune of more 
than eighty thousand pounds — a fortune invested in excellent se- 
curities. He lived up to his income, but never beyond it ; and all 
his debts added together would not reach two hundred pounds. 
If he had died a ruined man, I should have felt deeply for his chil- 
dren ; but I should not have hesitated to tell you the truth, as I am 
hesitating now. Let me repeat a question which escaped you, I 
think, when I first put it. Carry your mind back to the spring of 
this year. Do you remember the fourth of March ?” 

Miss Garth shook her head. “My memory for dates is bad at 


108 


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the best of times,” she said. “ I am too confused to exert it at * 
moment’s notice. Can you put your question in no other form ?” 

He put it in this form : 

“Do you remember any domestic event in the spring of the pres- 
ent year which appeared to affect Mr. Yanstone more seriously than 
usual ?” 

Miss Garth leaned forward in her chair, and looked eagerly at Mr. 
Pendril across the table. “ The journey to London !” she exclaim- 
ed. “ I distrusted the journey to London from the first ! Yes ! I 
remember Mr. Yanstone receiving a letter — I remember his reading 
it, and looking so altered from himself that he startled us all.” 

“Did you notice any apparent understanding oetween Mr. and 
Mrs. Yanstone on the subject of that letter?” 

“Yes: I did. One of the girls — it was Magdalen — mentioned 
the post-mark ; some place in America. It all comes back to me, 
Mr. Pendril. Mrs. Yanstone looked excited and anxious, the mo- 
ment she heard the place named. They went to London together 
the next day; they explained nothing to their daughters, nothing 
to me. Mrs. Yanstone said the journey was for family affairs. \ 
suspected something wrong; I couldn’t tell what. Mrs. Yanstone 
wrote to me from London, saying that her object was to consult a 
physician on the state of her health, and not to alarm her daughters 
by telling them. Something in the letter rather hurt me at the 
time. I thought there might be some other motive that she was 
keeping from me. Did I do her wrong ?” 

“You did her no wrong. There was a motive which she was 
keeping from you. In revealing that motive, I reveal the painful 
secret which brings me to this house. All that I could do to pre- 
pare you, I have done. Let me now tell the truth in the plainest 
and fewest words. When Mr. and Mrs. Yanstone left Combe-Ra- 
ven, in the March of the present year — ” 

Before he could complete the sentence, a sudden movement of 
Miss Garth’s interrupted him. She started violently, and looked 
round toward the window. “ Only the wind among the leaves,” 
she said, faintly. “ My nerves are so shaken, the least thing startles 
me. Speak out, for God’s sake ! When Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone left 
this house, tell me in plain words, why did they go to London ?” 

In plain words, Mr. Pendril told her : 

“ They went to London to be married.” 

With that answer he placed a slip of paper on the table. It was 
the marriage certificate of the dead parents, and the date it bore 
was March the twentieth, eighteen hundred and forty-six. 

Miss Garth neither moved nor spoke. The certificate lay beneath 
her unnoticed. She sat with her eyes rooted on the lawyer’s face; 
her mind stunned, her senses helpless. He saw that all his efforts 


NO NAME. 


109 


to break the shock of the discovery had been efforts made in vain ; 
he felt the vital importance of rousing her, and firmly and distinctly 
repeated the fatal words. 

“ They went to London to be married,” he said. “ Try to rouse 
yourself: try to realize the plain fact first: the explanation shall 
come afterward. Miss Garth, I speak the miserable truth ! In the 
spring of this year they left home ; they lived in London for a fort- 
night, in the strictest retirement ; they were married by license at 
the end of that time. There is a copy of the certificate, which I 
myself obtained on Monday last. Read the date of the marriage for 
yourself. It is Friday, the twentieth of March — the March of this 
present year.” 

As he pointed to the certificate, that faint breath of air among the 
shrubs beneath the window, which had startled Miss Garth, stirred 
the leaves once more. He heard it himself this time, and turned 
his face, so as to let the breeze play upon it. No breeze came ; no 
breath of air that was strong enough for him to feel, floated into the 
room. 

Miss Garth roused herself mechanically, and read the certificate. 
It seemed to produce no distinct impression on her : she laid it on 
one side in a lost, bewildered manner. “ Twelve years,” she said, in 
low, hopeless tones — “ twelve quiet, happy years I lived with this 
family. Mrs. Vanstone was my friend ; my dear, valued friend — my 
sister, I might almost say. I can’t believe it. Bear with me a lit- 
tle, sir, I can’t believe it yet.” 

“ I shall help you to believe it when I tell you more,” said Mr. 
Pendril — u you will understand me better when I take you back to 
the time of Mr. Yanstone’s early life. I won’t ask for your attention 
just yet. Let us wait a little, until you recover yourself.” 

They waited a few minutes. The lawyer took some letters from 
his pocket, referred to them attentively, and put them back again. 
“ Can you listen to me, now ?” he asked, kindly. She bowed her 
head in answer. Mr. Pendril considered with himself for a moment. 
“ I must caution you on one point,” he said. “ If the aspect of Mr. 
Vanstone’s character which I am now about to present to you seems 
in some respects at variance with your later experience, bear in mind 
that, when you first knew him twelve years since, he was a man of 
forty ; and that, when I first knew him, he was a lad of nineteen.” 

His next words raised the veil, and showed the irrevocable Past. 


110 


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CHAPTER XIII. 

“The fortune which Mr. Yanstone possessed when you knew 
him” (the lawyer began) “was part, and part only, of the inherit- 
ance which fell to him on his father’s death. Mr. Yanstone the eld- 
er, was a manufacturer in the North of England. He married early 
in life ; and the children of the marriage were either six or seven 
in number — I am not certain which. First, Michael, the eldest son, 
still living, and now an old man turned seventy. Secondly, Selina, 
the eldest daughter, who married in after-life, and who died ten or 
eleven years ago. After those two came other sons and daughters, 
whose early deaths make it unnecessary to mention them particular- 
ly. The last and by many years the youngest of the children was 
Andrew, whom I first knew, as I told you, at the age of nineteen. 
My father was then on the point of retiring from the active pursuit 
of his profession ; and, in succeeding to his business, I also succeed- 
ed to his connection with the Yanstones, as the family solicitor. 

“At that time, Andrew had just started in life by entering the 
army. After little more than a year of home-service, he was order- 
ed out with his regiment to Canada. When he quitted England,, 
he left his father and his elder brother Michael seriously at variance. 
I need not detain you by entering into the cause of the quarrel. I 
need only tell you that the elder Mr. Yanstone, with many excellent 
qualities, was a man of fierce and intractable temper. His eldest 
son had set him at defiance, under circumstances which might have 
justly irritated a father of far milder character; and he declared, 
in the most positive terms, that he would never see Michael’s face 
again. In defiance of my entreaties, and of the entreaties of his 
wife, he tore up, in our presence, the will which provided for Mi- 
chael’s share in the paternal inheritance. Such was the family posi- 
tion, when the younger son left home for Canada. 

“ Some months after Andrew’s arrival with his regiment at Que- 
bec, he became acquainted with a woman of great personal attrac- 
tions, who came, or said she came, from one of the Southern States 
of America. She obtained an immediate influence over him ; and 
she used it to the basest purpose. You knew the easy, affectionate, 
trusting nature of the man in later life — you can imagine how 
thoughtlessly he acted on the impulses of his youth. It is useless 
to dwell on this lamentable part of the story. He was just twenty- 
one : he was blindly devoted to a worthless woman ; and she led 


NO NAME. 


Ill 


him on, with merciless cunning, till it was too late to draw back. 
In one word, he committed the fatal error of his life : he married 
her. 

“ She had been wise enough in her own interests to dread the in- 
fluence of his brother-officers, and to peisuade him, up to the period 
of the marriage ceremony, to keep the proposed union between them 
a secret. She could do this ; but she could not provide against the 
results of accident. Hardly three months had passed, when a chance 
disclosure exposed the life she had led before her marriage. But 
one alternative was left to her husband — the alternative of instantly 
separating from her. 

“ The effect of the discovery on the unhappy boy — for a boy in 
disposition he still was — may be judged by the event which follow- 
ed the exposure. One of Andrew’s superior officers — a certain Ma- 
jor Kirke, if I remember right — found him in his quarters, writing 
to his father a confession of the disgraceful truth, with a loaded pis- 
tol by his side. That officer saved the lad’s life from his own hand, 
and hushed up the scandalous affair by a compromise. The mar- 
riage being a perfectly legal one, and the wife’s misconduct prior to 
the ceremony giving her husband no claim to his release from her 
by divorce, it was only possible to appeal to her sense of her own 
interests. A handsome annual allowance was secured to her, on 
condition that she returned to the place from which she had come ; 
that she never appeared in England; and that she ceased to use 
her husband’s name. Other stipulations were added to these. She 
accepted them all ; and measures were privately taken to have her 
well looked after in the place of her retreat. What life she led 
there, and whether she performed all the conditions imposed on 
her, I can not say. I can only tell you that she never, to my knowl- 
edge, came to England; that she never annoyed Mr. Yanstone; and 
that the annual allowance was paid her, through a local agent in 
America, to the day of her death. All that she wanted in marrying 
him was money ; and money she got. 

“ In the mean time, Andrew had left the regiment. Nothing 
would induce him to face his brother-officers after what had hap- 
pened. He sold out and returned to England. The first intelli- 
gence which reached him on his return was the intelligence of his 
father’s death. He came to my office in London, before going 
home, and there learned from my lips how the family quarrel had 
ended. 

“ The will which Mr. Yanstone the elder had destroyed in my 
presence had not been, so far as I know, replaced by another. 
When I was sent for, in the usual course, on his death, I fully ex- 
pected that the law would be left to make the customary divis- 
ion among his widow and his children. To my surprise, a will ap- 


112 


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peared among his papers, correctly drawn and executed, and dated 
about a week after the period when the first will had been destroy- 
ed. He had maintained his vindictive purpose against his eldest 
son, and had applied to a stranger for the professional assistance 
which I honestly believe he was ashamed to ask for at my hands. 

“ It is needless to trouble you with the provisions of the will in 
detail. There were the widow, and three surviving children to be 
provided for. The widow received a life-interest only in a portion 
of the testator’s property. The remaining portion was divided be- 
tween Andrew and Selina — two-thirds to the brother ; one-third to 
the sister. On the mother’s death, the money from which her in- 
come had been derived was to go to Andrew and Selina, in the 
same relative proportions as before — five thousand pounds having 
been first deducted from the sum, and paid to Michael, as the sole 
legacy left by the implacable father to his eldest son. 

“ Speaking in round numbers, the division of property, as settled 
by the will, stood thus. Before the mother’s death, Andrew had 
seventy thousand pounds ; Selina had thirty-five thousand pounds ; 
Michael — had nothing. After the mother’s death, Michael had five 
thousands pounds, to set against Andrew’s inheritance augmented 
to one hundred thousand, and Selina’s inheritance increased to fifty 
thousand. — Do not suppose that I am dwelling unnecessarily on this 
part of the subject. Every word I now speak bears on interests still 
in suspense, which vitally concern Mr. Vanstone’s daughters. As 
we get on from past to present, keep in mind the terrible inequality 
of Michael’s inheritance and Andrew’s inheritance. The harm done 
by that vindictive will is, I greatly fear, not over yet. 

“Andrew’s first impulse, when he heard the news which I had to 
tell him, was worthy of the open, generous nature of the man. He 
at once proposed to divide his inheritance with his elder brother. 
But there was one serious obstacle in the way. A letter from Mi- 
chael was waiting for him at my office when he came there, and that 
letter charged him with being the original cause of estrangement 
between his father and his elder brother. The efforts which he had 
made — bluntly and incautiously, I own ; but with the purest and 
kindest intentions, as I know — to compose the quarrel before leav 
ing home, were perverted by the vilest misconstruction, to support 
an accusation of treachery and falsehood which would have stung 
any man to the quick. Andrew felt, what I felt, that if these im- 
putations were not withdrawn before his generous intentions to- 
ward his brother took effect, the mere fact of their execution would 
amount to a practical acknowledgment of the justice of Michael’s 
charge against him. He wrote to his brother in the most forbearing 
terms. The answer received was as offensive as words could make 
it, Michael had inherited his father’s temper, unredeemed by his 


NO NAME. 


113 


father’s better qualities: his second letter reiterated the charges 
contained in the first, and declared that he would only accept the 
offered division as an act of atonement and restitution on Andrew’s 
part. I next wrote to the mother to use her influence. She was 
herself aggrieved at being left with nothing more than a life interest 
in her husband’s property ; she sided resolutely with Michael ; and 
she stigmatized Andrew’s proposal as an attempt to bribe her eld- 
est son into withdrawing a charge against his brother which that 
brother knew to be true. After this last repulse, nothing more could 
be done. Michael withdrew to the Continent ; and his mother fol- 
lowed him there. She lived long enough, and saved money enough 
out of her income, to add considerably, at her death, to her elder 
son’s five thousand pounds. He had previously still further im- 
proved his pecuniary position by an advantageous marriage ; and 
he is now passing the close of his days either in France or Switzer- 
land — a widower, with one son. We shall return to him shortly. In 
the mean time, I need only tell you that Andrew and Michael never 
again met — never again communicated, even by writing. To all in- 
tents and purposes, they were dead to each other, from those early 
days to the present time. * 

“ You can now estimate what Andrew’s position was when he left 
his profession and returned to England. Possessed of a fortune, he 
was alone in the world ; his future destroyed at the fair outset of 
life ; his mother and brother estranged from him ; his sister lately 
married, with interests and hopes in which he had no share. Men 
of firmer mental calibre might have found refuge from such a situa- 
tion as this in an absorbing intellectual pursuit. He was not capa- 
ble of the effort ; all the strength of his character lay in the affec- 
tions he had wasted. His place in the world was that quiet place 
at home, with wife and children to make his life happy, which he 
had lost forever. To look back was more than he dare. To look 
forward was more than he could. In sheer despair, he let his own 
impetuous youth drive him on ; and cast himself into the lowest dis- 
sipations of a London life. 

U A woman’s falsehood had driven him to his ruin. A woman’s 
love saved him at the outset of his downward career. Let us r not 
speak of her harshly — for we laid her with him yesterday in the 
grave. 

“ You, who only knew Mrs. Yanstone in later life, when illness 
and sorrow and secret care had altered and saddened her, can form 
no adequate idea of her attractions of person and character when 
she was a girl of seventeen. I was with Andrew when he first met 
her. I had tried to rescue him, for one night at least, from degrad- 
ing associates and degrading pleasures, by persuading him to go 
with me to a ball given by one of the great City Companies. There 


114 


NO NAME. 


they met. She produced a strong impression on him, the moment 
he saw her. To me, as to him, she was a total stranger. An in- 
troduction to her, obtained in the customary manner, informed him 
that she was the daughter of one Mr. Blake. The rest he discover- 
ed from herself. They were partners in the dance (unobserved in 
that crowded ball-room) all through the evening. 

“ Circumstances were against her from the first. She was unhap- 
py at home. Her family and friends occupied no recognized station 
in life : they were mean, underhand people, in every way unworthy 
of her. It was her first ball — it was the first time she had ever met 
with a man who had the breeding, the manners, and the conversa 
tion of a gentleman. Are these excuses for her, which I have no 
right to make ? If we have any human feeling for human weakness, 
surely not ! 

“ The meeting of that night decided their future. When other 
meetings had followed, when the confession of her love had escaped 
her, he took the one course of all others (took it innocently and un- 
consciously), which was most dangerous to them both. His frank- 
ness and his sense of honor forbade him to deceive her : he opened 
his heart, and told her the truth. She was a generous, impulsive 
girl ; she had no home ties strong enough to plead with her ; she 
was passionately fond of him — and he had made that appeal to her 
pity which, to the eternal honor of women, is the hardest of all ap- $ 
peals for them to resist. She saw, and saw truly, that she alone 
stood between him and his ruin. The last chance of his rescue 
hung on her decision. She decided ; and saved him. 

“ Let me not be misunderstood ; let me not be accused of trifling 
with the serious social question on which my narrative forces me 
to touch. I will defend her memory by no false reasoning — I will 
only speak the truth. It is the truth that she snatched him from 
mad excesses which must have ended in his early death. It is the 
truth that she restored him to that happy home-existence which you 
remember so tenderly — which Tie remembered so gratefully that, on 
the day when he was free, he made her his wife. Let strict moral- 
ity claim its right, and condemn her early fault. I have read my 
Kc ^ Testament to little purpose, indeed, if Christian mercy may not 
soften the hard sentence against her — if Christian charity may not 
find a plea for her memory in the love and fidelity, the suffering and 
the sacrifice, of her whole life. 

“A few words more will bring us to a later time, and to events 
which have happened within your own experience. 

“I need not remind you that the position in which Mr. Vanstone 
was now placed could lead in the end to but one result — to a dis- 
closure, more or less inevitable, of the truth. Attempts were made 
to keep the hopeless misfortune of his life a secret from Miss Blake’s 


NO NAMtfi- 


115 


family ; and, as a matter of course, those attempts failed before the 
relentless scrutiny of her father and her friends. What might have 
happened if her relatives had been, what is termed 1 respectable,’ I 
can not pretend to say. As it was, they were people who could (in 
the common phrase) be conveniently treated with. The only sur- 
vivor of the family at the present time is a scoundrel calling him- 
self Captain Wragge. When I tell you that he privately extorted 
the price of his silence from Mrs. Yanstone to the last ; and when I 
add that his conduct presents no extraordinary exception to the 
conduct, in their lifetime, of the other relatives — you will under- 
stand what sort of people I had to deal with in my client’s interests, 
and how their assumed indignation was appeased. 

“ Having, in the first instance, left England for Ireland, Mr. Yan- 
stone and Miss Blake remained there afterward for some years. 
Girl as she was, she faced her position and its necessities without 
flinching. Having once resolved to sacrifice her life to the man she 
loved ; having quieted her conscience by persuading herself that 
his marriage was a legal mockery, and that she was ‘ his wife in the 
sight of Heaven ;’ she set herself from the first to accomplish the 
one foremost purpose of so living with him, in the world’s eye, as 
never to raise the suspicion that she was not his lawful wife. The 
women are few indeed, who can not resolve firmly, scheme patient- 
ly, and act promptly, where the dearest interests of their lives are 
concerned. Mrs. Yanstone — she has a right now, remember, to that 
name — Mrs. Yanstone had more than the average share of a woman’s 
tenacity and a woman’s tact ; and she took all the needful precau- 
tions, in those early days, which her husband’s less ready capacity 
had not the art to devise — precautions to which they were largely 
indebted for the preservation of their secret in later times. 

“ Thanks to these safeguards, not a shadow of suspicion followed 
them when they returned to England. They first settled in Devon- 
shire, merely because they were far removed there from that north- 
ern county in which Mr. Yanstone’s family and connections had 
been known. On the part of his surviving relatives, they had no 
curious investigations to dread. He was totally estranged from his 
mother and his elder brother. His married sister had been forbidden 
by her husband (who was a clergyman) to hold any communication 
with him, from the period when he had fallen into the deplorable 
way of life which I have described as following his return from 
Canada. Other relations he had none. When he and Miss Blake 
left Devonshire, their next change of residence was to this house. 
Neither courting nor avoiding notice ; simply happy in themselves, 
in their children, and in their quiet rural life; unsuspected by the 
few neighbors who formed their modest circle of acquaintance to be 
other than what they seemed — the truth in their case, as in the 


116 


NO NAME. 


cases of many others, remained undiscovered until accident forced 
it into the light of day. 

“ If, in your close intimacy with them, it seems strange that they 
should never have betrayed themselves, let me ask you to consider 
the circumstances, and you will understand the apparent anomaly. 
Remember that they had been living as husband and wife, to all in- 
tents and purposes (except that the marriage-service had not been 
read over them), for fifteen years before you came into the house ; 
and bear in mind, at the same time, that no event occurred to dis- 
turb Mr. Vanstone’s happiness in the present, to remind him of the 
past, or to warn him of the future, until the announcement of his 
wife’s death reached him, in that letter from America which you 
saw placed in his hand. From that day forth — when a past which 
be abhorred was forced back to his memory ; when a future which 
she had never dared to anticipate was placed within her reach — you 
will soon perceive, if you have not perceived already, that they both 
betrayed themselves, time after time ; and that your innocence of all 
suspicion, and their children’s innocence of all suspicion, alone pre- 
vented you from discovering the truth. 

“ The sad story of the past is now as well known to you as to me. 
I have had hard words to speak. God knows I have spoken them 
with true sympathy for the living, with true tenderness for the 
memory of the dead.” 

He paused, turned his lace a little away, and rested his head on 
his hand, in the quiet undemonstrative manner which was natural 
to him. Thus far, Miss Garth had only interrupted his narrative by 
an occasional word, or by a mute token of her attention. She made 
no effort to conceal her tears; they fell fast and silently over her 
wasted cheeks, as she looked up and spoke to him. “ I have done 
you some injury, sir, in my thoughts,” she said, with a noble simplic- 
ity. “ I know you better now. Let me ask your forgiveness ; let 
me take your hand.” 

Those words, and the action which accompanied them, touched 
him deeply. He took her hand in silence. She was the first to 
speak, the first to set the example of self-control. It is one of the 
noble instincts of women, that nothing more powerfully rouses them 
to struggle with their own sorrow than the sight of a man’s distress. 
She quietly dried her tears ; she quietly drew her chair round the 
table, so as to sit nearer to him when she spoke again. 

“ I have been sadly broken, Mr. Pendril, by what has happened 
in this house,” she said, “ or I should have borne what you have 
told me better than I have borne it to-day. Will you let me ask 
one question before you go on ? My heart aches for the children 
of my love — more than ever my children now. Is there no hope for 


NO NAME. 117 

their future ? Are they left with no prospect but poverty before 
them ?” 

The lawyer hesitated before he answered the question. 

“ They are left dependent,” he said, at last, “ on the justice and 
the mercy of a stranger.” 

“ Through the misfortune of their birth ?” 

“ Through the misfortunes which have followed the marriage of 
their parents.” 

With that startling answer he rose, took up the will from the 
floor, and restored it to its former position on the table between 
them. 

“ I can only place the truth before you,” he resumed, “ in one plain 
form of words. The marriage has destroyed this will, and has left 
Mr. Vanstone’s daughters dependent on their uncle.” 

As he spoke, the breeze stirred again among the shrubs under the 
window. 

“ On their uncle ?” repeated Miss Garth. She considered for a 
moment, and laid her hand suddenly on Mr. Pendril’s arm. “ Not 
on Michael Vanstone !” 

“Yes: on Michael Vanstone.” 

Miss Garth’s hand still mechanically grasped the lawyer’s arm. 
Her whole mind was absorbed in the effort to realize the discovery 
which had now burst on her. 

“ Dependent on Michael Vanstone !” she said to herself. “ De- 
pendent on their father’s bitterest enemy ? How can it be ?” 

“ Give me your attention for a few minutes more,” said Mr. Pen- 
dril, “ and you shall hear. The sooner we can bring this painful in- 
terview to a close, the sooner I can open communications with Mr. 
Michael Vanstone, and the sooner you will know what he decides 
on doing for his brother’s orphan daughters. I repeat to you that 
they are absolutely dependent on him. You will most readily un- 
derstand how and why, if we take up the chain of events where we 
last left it— at the period of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone’s marriage.” 

“ One moment, sir,” said Miss Garth. “ Were you in the secret of 
that marriage at the time when it took place ?” 

“ Unhappily, I was not. I was away from London— away from 
England at the time. If Mr. Vanstone had been able to communi- 
cate with me when the letter from America announced the death 
of his wife, the fortunes of his daughters would not have been now 
at stake.” 

He paused, and, before proceeding further, looked once more at 
the letters which he had consulted at an earlier period of the inter- 
view. He took one letter from the rest, and put it on the table by 
his side. 

“At the beginning of the present year,” he resumed, “ a very serl 


118 


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ous business necessity, in connection with some West Indian prop- 
erty possessed by an old client and friend of mine, required the 
presence either of myself, or of one of my two partners, in Jamaica. 
One of the two could not be spared ; the other was not in health to 
undertake the voyage. There was no choice left but for me to go. 
I wrote to Mr. Yanstone, telling him that I should leave England at 
the end of February, and that the nature of the business which took 
me away afforded little hope of my getting back from the West 
Indies before June. My letter was not written with any special 
motive. I merely thought it right — seeing that my partners were 
not admitted to my knowledge of Mr. Yanstone’s private affairs — to 
warn him of my absence, as a measure of formal precaution which it 
was right to take. At the end of February I left England, without 
having heard from him. I was on the sea when the news of his 
wife’s death reached him, on the fourth of March ; and I did not re- 
turn until the middle of last June.” 

“You warned him of your departure,” interposed Miss Garth. 
“ Did you not warn him of your return ?” 

“ Not personally. My head-clerk sent him one of the circulars 
which were dispatched from my office, in various directions, to an- 
nounce my return. It was the first substitute I thought of, for the 
personal letter which the pressure of innumerable occupations, all 
crowding on me together after my long absence, did not allow me 
leisure to write. Barely a month later, the first information of his 
marriage reached me in a letter from himself, written on the day of 
the fatal accident. The circumstances which induced him to write 
arose out of an event in which you must have taken some interest — 
I mean the attachment between Mr. Clare’s son and Mr. Yanstone’s 
youngest daughter.” 

“ I can not say that I was favorably disposed toward that attach- 
ment at the time,” replied Miss Garth. “ I was ignorant then of the 
family secret: I know better now.” 

“ Exactly. The motive which you can now appreciate is the mo- 
tive that leads us to the point. The young lady herself (as I have 
heard from the elder Mr. Clare, to whom I am indebted for my 
knowledge of the circumstances in detail) confessed her attachment 
to her father, and innocently touched him to the quick by a chance 
reference to his own early life. He had a long conversation with 
Mrs. Yanstone, at which they both agreed that Mr. Clare must be 
privately informed of the truth, before the attachment between the 
two young people was allowed to proceed further. It was painful 
in the last degree, both to husband and wife, to be reduced to this 
alternative. But they were resolute, honorably resolute, in making 
the sacrifice of their own feelings ; and Mr. Yanstone betook himself 
on the spot to Mr. Clare’s cottage. — You no doubt observed a re- 


NO NAME. 


119 


markable change in Mr. Yanstone’s manner on that day ; and you 
can now account for it ?” 

Miss Garth bowed her head, and Mr. Pendril went on. 

“ You are sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Clare’s contempt for all 
social prejudices,” he continued, “ to anticipate his reception of the 
confession which his neighbor addressed to him. Five minutes 
after the interview had begun, the two old friends were as easy and 
unrestrained together as usual. In the course of conversation, Mr. 
Yanstone mentioned the pecuniary arrangement which he had made 
for the benefit of his daughter and of her future husband — and, in 
doing so, he naturally referred to his will here, on the table between 
us. Mr. Clare, remembering that his friend had been married in the 
March of that year, at once asked when the will had been executed ; 
receiving the reply that it had been made five years since; and, 
thereupon, astounded Mr. Yanstone by telling him bluntly that the 
document was waste paper in the eye of the law. Up to that mo- 
ment he, like many other persons, had been absolutely ignorant 
that a man’s marriage is, legally as well as socially, considered to 
be the most important event in his life ; that it destroys the valid- 
ity of any will which he may have made as a single man ; and that 
it renders absolutely necessary the entire re-assertion of his testa- 
mentary intentions in the character of a husband. The statement 
of this plain fact appeared to overwhelm Mr. Yanstone. Declaring 
that his friend had laid him under an obligation which he should 
remember to his dying day, he at once left the cottage, at once re- 
turned home, and wrote me this letter.” 

He handed the letter open to Miss Garth. In tearless, speechless 
grief, she read these words : 

u My dear Pendril, — Since we last wrote to each other an ex- 
traordinary change has taken place in my life. About a week after 
you went away, I received news from America which told me that I 
was free. Need I say what use I made of that freedom ? Need I 
say that the mother of my children is now my Wife ? 

“ If you are surprised at not having heard from me the moment 
you got back, attribute my silence, in great part — if not altogether 

to my own total ignorance of the legal necessity for making an- 
other will. *Not half an hour since, I was enlightened for the first 
time (under circumstances which I will mention when we meet) bv 
my old friend, Mr. Clare. Family anxieties have had something to 
do with my silence as well. My wife’s confinement is close at hand ; 
and, besides this serious anxiety, my second daughter is just engaged 
to be married. Until I saw Mr. Clare to-day, these matters so filled 
my mind that I never thought of writing to you during the one 
short month which is all that has passed since I got news of your 


120 


NO NAME. 


return. Now I know that my will must be made again, I write jo 
stantly. For God’s sake, come on the day when you receive this — 
come and relieve me from the dreadful thought that my two darling 
girls are at this moment unprovided for. If any thing happened to 
me, and if my desire to do their mother justice, ended (through my 
miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and Magdalen 
disinherited, I should not rest in my grave ! Come, at any cost, to 
yours ever, A. V.” 

“ On the Saturday morning,” Mr. Pendril resumed, “ those lines 
reached me. I instantly set aside all other business, and drove to 
the railway. At the London terminus, I heard the first news of the 
Friday’s accident ; heard it, with conflicting accounts of the num- 
bers and names of the passengers killed. At Bristol, they were bet- 
ter informed ; and the dreadful truth about Mr. Vans! one was cpn- 
firmed. I had time to recover myself before I reached your station 
here, and found Mr. Clare’s son waiting for me. He took me to his 
father’s cottage ; and there, without losing a moment, I drew out 
Mrs. Vanstone’s will. My object was to secure the only provision 
for her daughters which it was now possible to make. Mr. Van- 
stone having died intestate, a third of his fortune would go to his 
widow ; and the rest would be divided among his next of kin. As 
children born out of wedlock, Mr. Vanstone’s daughters, under the 
circumstances of their father’s death, had no more claim to a share 
*in his property than the daughters of one of his laborers in the vil- 
lage. The one chance left was that their mother might sufficiently 
recover to leave her third share to them, by will, in the event of her 
decease. Now you know why I wrote to you to ask for that inter- 
view — why I waited day and night, in the hope of receiving a sum- 
mons to the house. I was sincerely sorry to send back such an 
answer to your note of inquiry as I was compelled to write. But 
while there was a chance of the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone’s life, 
the secret of the marriage was hers, not mine ; and every considera- 
tion of delicacy forbade me to disclose it.” 

“You did right, sir,” said Miss Garth; “I understand your mo- 
tives, and respect them.” 

“ My last attempt to provide for the daughters,” continued Mr. 
Pendril, “ was, as you know, rendered unavailing by the dangerous 
nature of Mrs. Vanstone’s illness. Her death left the infant who 
survived her by a few hours (the infant born, you will remember, in 
lawful wedlock) possessed, in due legal course, of the whole of Mr. 
Vanstone’s fortune. On the child’s death — if it had only outlived 
the mother by a few seconds, instead of a few hours, the result 
would have been the same — the next of kin to the legitimate off- 
spring took the money ; and that next of kin is the infant’s paternal 


NO NAME. 


121 


uncle, Michael Vanstone. The whole fortune of eighty thousand 
pounds has virtually passed into his possession already.” 

“ Are there no other relations ?” asked Miss Garth. “ Is there no 
hope from any one else ?” 

“There are no other relations with Michael Vanstone’s claim,” 
said the lawyer. “ There are no grandfathers or grandmothers of 
the dead child (on the side of either of the parents) now alive. It 
was not likely there should be, considering the ages of Mr. and Mrs. 
Yanstone when they died. But it is a misfortune to be reasonably 
lamented that no other uncles or aunts survive. There are cousins 
alive ; a son and two daughters of that elder sister of Mr. Vanstone’s, 
who married Archdeacon Bartram, and who died, as I told you, 
some years since. But their interest is superseded by the interest 
of the nearer blood. No, Miss Garth, we must look facts as they 
are resolutely in the face. Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s 
Children ; and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.” 

“ A cruel law, Mr. Pendril — a cruel law in a Christian country.” 

“ Cruel as it is, Miss Garth, it stands excused by a shocking pe- 
culiarity in this case. I am far from defending the law of England 
as it effects illegitimate offspring. On the contrary, I think it a 
disgrace to the nation. It visits the sins of the parents on the chil- 
dren ; it encourages vice by depriving fathers and mothers of the 
strongest of all motives for making the atonement of marriage ; and 
it claims to produce these two abominable results in the names of 
morality and religion. But it has no extraordinary oppression to an- 
swer for in the case of these' unhappy girls. The more merciful and 
Christian law of other countries, which allows the marriage of the 
parents to make the children legitimate, has no mercy on these chil- 
dren. The accident of their father having been married, when he 
first met with their mother, has made them the outcasts of the whole 
social community : it has placed them out of the pale of the Civil 
Law of Europe. I tell you the hard truth — it is useless to disguise 
it. There is no hope, if we look back at the past : there may be 
hope, if we look on to the future. The best service which I can 
now render you is to shorten the period of your suspense. In less 
than an hour I shall be on my way back to London. Immediately 
on my arrival, I will ascertain the speediest means of communicating 
with Mr. Michael Vanstone ; and will let you know the result. Sad 
as the position of the two sisters now is, we must look at it on its 
best side ; we must not lose hope.” 

“ Hope ?” repeated Miss Garth. “ Hope from Michael Vanstone !” 

“ Yes ; hope from the influence on him of time, if not from the in- 
fluence of mercy. As I have already told you, he is now an old 
man ; he can not, in the course of nature, expect to live much long- 
er. If he looks back to the period when he and his brother were 


122 


NO NAME. 


first at variance, he must look back through thirty years. Surely, 
these are softening influences which must affect any man ? Surely, 
his own knowledge of the shocking circumstances under which he 
has become possessed of this money will plead with him, if nothing 
else does ?” 

“ I will try to think as you do, Mr. Pendril — I will try to hope 
for the best. Shall we be left long in suspense before the decision 
reaches us ?” 

“I trust not. The only delay on my side will be caused by the 
necessity of discovering the place of Michael Vanstone’s residence 
on the Continent. I think I have the means of meeting this diffi- 
culty successfully ; and the moment I reach London, those means 
shall be tried.” 

He took up his hat ; and then returned to the table on which the 
father’s last letter, and the father’s useless will, were lying side by 
side. After a moment’s consideration, he placed them both in Miss 
Garth’s hands. 

“It may help you in breaking the hard truth to the orphan sis- 
ters,” he said, in his quiet, self-repressed way, “ if they can see how 
their father refers to them in his will — if they can read his letter to 
me, the last he ever wrote. Let these tokens tell them that the one 
idea of their father’s life was the idea of making atonement to his 
children. ‘ They may think bitterly of their birth,’ he said to me, 
at the time when I drew this useless will ; 1 but they shall never 
think bitterly of me. I will cross them in nothing : they shall nev- 
er know a sorrow that I can spare them, or a want which I will not 
satisfy.’ He made me put those words in his will, to plead for him 
when the truth which he had concealed from his children in his 
lifetime was revealed to them after his death. No law can deprive 
his daughters of the legacy of his repentance and his love. I leave 
the will and the letter* to help you: I give them both into your 
care.” 

He saw how his parting kindness touched her, and thoughtfully 
hastened the farewell. She took his hand in both her own, and 
murmured a few broken words of gratitude. “ Trust me to do my 
best,” he said — and, turning away with a merciful abruptness, left 
her. In the broad, cheerful sunshine, he had come in to reveal the 
fatal truth. In the broad, cheerful sunshine — that truth disclosed 
—he went out. 


NO NAME. 


123 


CHAPTER XIV. 

It was nearly an hour past noon when Mr. Pendril left the house. 
Miss Garth sat down again at the table alone, and tried to face the 
necessity which the event of the morning now forced on her. 

Her mind was not equal to the effort. She tried to lessen the 
strain on it — to lose the sense of her own position — to escape from 
her thoughts for a few minutes only. After a little, she opened Mr. 
Vanstone’s letter, and mechanically set herself to read it through 
once more. 

One by one, the last words of the dead man fastened themselves 
more and more firmly on her attention. The unrelieved solitude, 
the unbroken silence, helped their influence on her mind, and open- 
ed it to those very impressions of past and present which she was 
most anxious to shun. As she reached the melancholy lines which 
closed the letter, she found herself — insensibly, almost unconscious- 
ly, at first — tracing the fatal chain of events, link by link backward, 
until she reached its beginning in the contemplated marriage be- 
tween Magdalen and Francis Clare. 

That marriage had taken Mr. Vanstone to his old friend, with the 
confession on his lips which would otherwise never have escaped 
them. Thence came the discovery which had sent him home to 
summon the lawyer to the house. That summons, again, had pro- 
duced the inevitable acceleration of the Saturday’s journey to Fri- 
day ; the Friday of the fatal accident, the Friday when he went to 
his death. From his death followed the second bereavement which 
had made the house desolate ; the helpless position of the daughters 
whose prosperous future had been his dearest care ; the revelation 
of the secret which had overwhelmed her that morning; the dis- 
closure, more terrible still, which she now stood committed to make 
to the orphan sisters. For the first time she saw the whole se- 
quence of events — saw it as plainly as the cloudless blue of the sky, 
and the green glow of the trees in the sunlight outside. 

How — when could she tell them? Who could approach them 
with the disclosure of their own illegitimacy, before their father 
and mother had been dead a week? Who could speak the dread- 
ful words, while the first tears were wet on their cheeks, while the 
first pang of separation was at its keenest in their hearts, while the 
memory of the funeral was not a day old yet ? Not their last friend 
left ; not the faithful woman whose heart bled for them. No ! si- 


124 


NO NAME. 


lence for the present time, at all risks — merciful silence*, fbr many 
days to come ! 

She left the room, with the will and the letter in her hand — with 
the natural, human pity at her heart, which sealed her lips and shut 
her eyes resolutely to the future. In the hall she stopped and list- 
ened. Not a sound was audible. She softly ascended the stairs, 
on her way to her own room, and passed the door of Norah’s bed- 
chamber. Voices inside, the voices of the two sisters, caught her 
ear. After a moment’s consideration, she checked herself, turned 
back, and quickly descended the stairs again. Both Norah and 
Magdalen knew of the interview between Mr. Pendril and herself ; 
she had felt it her duty to show them his letter making the ap- 
pointment. Could she excite their suspicion by locking herself up 
from them in her room, as soon as the lawyer had left the house ? 
Her hand trembled on the banister ; she felt that her face might be^ 
tray her. The self-forgetful fortitude, which had never failed her 
until that day, had been tried once too often — had been tasked be- 
yond its powers at last. 

At the hall door she reflected for a moment again, and went into 
the garden ; directing her steps to a rustic bench and table placed 
out of sight of the house, among the trees. In past times, she had 
often sat there, with Mrs. Vanstone on one side, with Norah on the 
other, with Magdalen and the dogs romping on the grass. Alone 
she sat there now — the will and the letter, which she dared not 
trust out of her own possession, laid on the table — her head bowed 
over them ; her face hidden in her hands. Alone she sat there, and 
tried to rouse her sinking courage. 

Doubts thronged on her of the dark days to come ; dread beset 
her of the hidden danger which her own silence toward Norah and 
Magdalen might store up in the near future. The accident of a 
moment might suddenly reveal the truth. Mr. Pendril might write, 
might personally address himself to the sisters, in the natural con' 
viction that she had enlightened them. Complications might gath- 
er round them at a moment’s notice ; unforeseen necessities might 
arise for immediately leaving the house. She saw all these perils— 
and still the cruel courage to face the worst, and speak, was as far 
from her as ever. Ere long, the thickening conflict of her thoughts 
forced its way outward for relief, in words and actions. She raised 
her head, and beat her hand helplessly on the table. 

“ God help me, what am I to do ?” she broke out. u How am I 
to tell them ?” 

“ There is no need to tell them,” said a voice behind her. “ They 
know it already.” 

She started to her feet, and looked round. It was Magdalen who 
stood before her — Magdalen who had spoken those words. 


NO NAME. 


125 


Yes, there was the graceful figure, in its mourning garments, 
standing out tall and black and motionless against the leafy back- 
ground. There was Magdalen herself, with a changeless stillness 
on her white face ; with an icy resignation in her steady gray eyes. 

“We know it already,” she repeated, in clear, measured tones. 
“ Mr. Vanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children ; and the law 
leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.” 

So, without a tear on her cheeks, without a faltering tone in her 
voice, she repeated the lawyer’s own words, exactly as he had 
spoken them. Miss Garth staggered back a step, and caught at 
the bench to support herself. Her head swam ; she closed her eyes 
in a momentary faintness. When they opened again, Magdalen’s 
arm was supporting her, Magdalen’s breath fanned her cheek, Mag- 
dalen’s cold lips kissed her. She drew back from the kiss; the 
touch of the girl’s lips thrilled her with terror. 

As soon as she could speak, she put the inevitable question. 
“ You heard us,” she said. “ Where ?” 

“ Under the open window.” 

“ All the time ?” 

u From beginning to end.” 

She had listened — this girl of eighteen, in the first week of her 
orphanage, had listened to the whole terrible revelation, word by 
word, as it fell from the lawyer’s lips; and had never once be- 
trayed herself! From first to last, the only movements which 
had escaped her, had been movements guarded enough and slight 
enough to be mistaken for the passage of the summer breeze through 
the leaves ! 

“ Don’t try to speak yet,” she said, in softer and gentler tones. 
“ Don’t look at me with those doubting eyes. What wrong have I 
done ? When Mr. Pendril wished to speak to you about Norah and 
me, his letter gave us our choice to be present at the interview, or 
to keep away. If my elder sister decided to keep away, how could 
I come ? How could I hear my own story, except as I did ? My 
listening has done no harm. It has done good — it has saved you 
the distress of speaking to us. You have suffered enough for us 
already ; it is time we learned to suffer for ourselves. I have learn- 
ed. And Norah is learning.” 

“Norah!” 

“ Yes. I have done all I could to spare you. I have told Norah.” 

She had told Norah ! Was this girl, whose courage had faced the 
terrible necessity from which a woman old enough to be her moth- 
er had recoiled, the girl Miss Garth had brought up ? the girl whose 
nature she had believed to be as well known to her as her own ? 

“Magdalen!” she cried out, passionately, “you frighten me!” 

Magdalen only sighed, and turned wearily away. 


126 


NO NAME. 


“ Try not to think worse of me than I deserve,” she said. “ I 
can’t cry. My heart is numbed.” 

She moved away slowly over the grass. Miss Garth watched the 
tall black figure gliding away alone, until it was lost among the 
trees. While it was in sight, she could think of nothing else. The 
moment it was gone, she thought of Norah. For the first time in 
her experience of the sisters, her heart led her instinctively to the 
elder of the two. 

Norah was still in her own room. She was sitting on the couch 
by the window, with her mother’s old music-book — the keepsake 
which Mrs. Yanstone had found in her husband’s study, on the day 
of her husband’s death — spread open on her lap. She looked up 
from it with such quiet sorrow, and pointed with such ready kind- 
ness to the vacant place at her side, that Miss Garth doubted for 
the moment whether Magdalen had spoken the truth. “ See,” said 
Norah, simply turning to the first leaf in the music-book — “my 
mother’s name written in it, and some verses to my father on the 
next page. We may keep this for ourselves, if we keep nothing else.” 
She put her arm round Miss Garth’s neck, and a faint tinge of 
color stole over her cheeks. “ I see anxious thoughts in your face,” 
she whispered. “ Are you anxious about me ? Are you doubting 
whether I have heard it ? I have heard the whole truth. I might 
have felt it bitterly, later; it is too soon to feel it now. You have 
seen Magdalen ? She went out to find you — where did you leave 
her ?” 

“ In the garden. I couldn’t speak to her ; I couldn’t look at her. 
Magdalen has frightened me.” 

Norah rose hurriedly ; rose, startled and distressed by Miss Garth’s 
reply. 

“Don’t think ill of Magdalen,” she said. “Magdalen suffers in 
secret more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard 
about us this morning. Does it matter who we are, or what we 
keep or lose ? What loss is there for us, after the loss of our father 
and mother ? Oh, Miss Garth, there is the only bitterness ! What 
did we remember of them when we laid them in the grave yester- 
day ? Nothing but the love they gave us — the love we must never 
hope for again. What else can we remember to-day ? What change 
can the world, and the world’s cruel laws, make in our memory of 
the kindest father, the kindest mother, that children ever had !” 
She stopped : struggled with her rising grief ; and quietly, resolute- 
ly, kept it down. “ Will you wait here ?” she said, “ while I go and 
bring Magdalen back ? Magdalen was always your favorite : I want 
her to be your favorite still.” She laid the music-book gently on 
Miss Garth’s lap — and left the room. 

“ Magdalen was always your favorite 


NO NAME. 


127 


Tenderly as they had been spoken, those words fell reproachfully 
on Miss Garth’s ear. For the first time in the long companionship 
of her pupils and herself, a doubt whether she, and all those about 
her, had not been fatally mistaken in their relative estimate of the 
sisters, now forced itself on her mind. 

She had studied the natures of her two pupils in the daily inti- 
macy of twelve years. Those natures, which she believed herself to 
have sounded through all their depths, had been suddenly tried in 
the sharp ordeal of affliction. How had they come out from the 
test ? As her previous experience had prepared her to see them ? 
No : in flat contradiction to it. 

What did such a result as this imply ? 

Thoughts came to her, as she asked herself that question, which 
have startled and saddened us all. 

Does there exist in every human being, beneath that outward and 
visible character which is shaped into form by the social influences 
surrounding us, an inward, invisible disposition, which is part of 
ourselves ; which education may indirectly modify, but can never 
hope to change? Is the philosophy which denies this, and asserts 
that we are born with dispositions like blank sheets of paper, a 
philosophy which has failed to remark that we are not born with 
blank faces — a philosophy which has never compared together two 
infants of a few days old, and has never observed that those infants 
are not bom with blank tempers for mothers and nurses to fill up at 
will? Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred 
forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of 
mortal encouragement and mortal repression — hidden Good and 
hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity 
and the sufficient temptation ? Within these earthly limits, is earth- 
ly Circumstance ever the key ; and can no human vigilance warn us 
beforehand of the forces imprisoned in ourselves which that key 
may unlock ? 

For the first time, thoughts such as these rose darkly — as shadowy 
and terrible possibilities — in Miss Garth’s mind. For the first time, 
she associated those possibilities with the past conduct and charac- 
ters, with the future lives and fortunes of the orphan sisters. 

Searching, as in a glass darkly, into the two natures, she felt her 
way, doubt by doubt, from one possible truth to another. It might 
be, that the upper surface of their characters was all that she had, 
thus far, plainly seen in Norah and Magdalen. It might be, that 
the unalluring secrecy and reserve of one sister, the all-attractive 
openness and high spirits of the other, were more or less referable, 
in each case, to those physical causes which work toward the pro- 
duction of moral results. It might be, that under the surface so 
formed — a surface which there had been nothing, hitherto, in the 


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h a ppy, prosperous, uneventful lives of the sisters to disturb — forces 
of inborn and inbred disposition had remained concealed, which the 
shock of the first serious calamity in their lives had now thrown up 
into view. Was this so ? Was the promise of the future shining 
with prophetic light through the surface-shadow of Norah’s reserve, 
and darkening with prophetic gloom, under the surface-glitter of 
Magdalen’s bright spirits ? If the life of the elder sister was des- 
tined henceforth to be the ripening ground of the undeveloped 
Good that was in her — was the life of the younger doomed to be the 
battle-field of mortal conflict with the roused forces of Evil in herself? 

On the brink of that terrible conclusion, Miss Garth shrank back 
in dismay. Her heart was the heart of a true woman. It accept- 
ed the conviction which raised Norali higher in her love : it rejected 
the doubt which threatened to place Magdalen lower. She rose 
and paced the room impatiently; she recoiled with an angry sud- 
denness from the whole train of thought in which her mind had 
been engaged but the moment before. What if there were danger- 
ous elements in the strength of Magdalen’s character — was it not 
her duty to help the girl against herself ? How had she performed 
that duty ? She had let herself be governed by first fears and first 
impressions ; she had never waited to consider whether Magdalen’s 
openly acknowledged action of that morning might not imply a 
self-sacrificing fortitude, which promised, in after-life, the noblest 
and the most enduring results. She had let Norah go and speak 
those words of tender remonstrance, which she should first have 
spoken herself. “Oh!” she thought bitterly, “how long I have 
lived in the world, and how little I have known of my own weak- 
ness and wickedness until to-day !” 

The door of the room opened. Norah came in, as she had gone 
out, alone. 

“ Do you remember leaving any thing on the little table by the 
garden-seat ?” she asked, quietly. 

Before Miss Garth could answer the question, she held out her 
father’s will and her father’s letter. 

“ Magdalen came back after you went away,” she said, “ and found 
these last relics. She heard Mr. Pendril say they were her legacy 
and mine. When I went into the garden, she was reading the letter. 
There was no need for me to speak to her; our father had spoken 
to her from his grave. See how she has listened to him !” 

She pointed to the letter. The traces of heavy tear-drops lay thick 
over the last lines of the dead man’s writing. 

“ Her tears,” said Norah, softly. 

Miss Garth’s head drooped low, over the mute revelation of Mag- 
dalen’s return to her better self. 


NO NAME. 


129 


u Oh, never doubt her again !” pleaded Norah. “ We are alone 
now — we have our hard way through the world to walk on as pa- 
tiently as we can. If Magdalen ever falters and turns back, help 
her for the love of old times ; help her against herself.” 

“ With all my heart and strength — as God shall judge me, with 
the devotion of my whole life !” In those fervent words Miss Garth 
answered. She took the hand which Norah held out to her, and 
put it, in sorrow and humility, to her lips. “ Oh, my love, forgive 
me! I have been miserably blind — I have never valued you as I 
ought !” 

Norah gently checked her before she could say more; gently 
whispered, “ Come with me into the garden — come, and help Mag- 
dalen to look patiently to the future.” 

The future ! Who could see the faintest glimmer of it ? Who 
could see any thing but the ill-omened figure of Michael Yanstone, 
posted darkly on the verge of the present time — and closing all the 
prospect that lay beyond him ? 


CHAPTER XV. 

On the next morning but one, news was received from Mr. Pendril. 
The place of Michael Yanstone’s residence on the Continent had 
been discovered. He was living at Zurich ; and a letter had been 
dispatched to him, at that place, on the day when the information 
was obtained. In the course of the coming week an answer might 
be expected, and the purport of it should be communicated forth- 
with to the ladies at Combe-Raven. 

Short as it was, the interval of delay passed wearily. Ten days 
elapsed before the expected answer was received ; and when it came 
at last, it proved to be, strictly speaking, no answer at all. Mr. Pen- 
dril had been merely referred to an agent in London who was in 
possession of Michael Yanstone’s instructions. Certain difficulties 
had been discovered in connection with those instructions, which 
had produced the necessity of once more writing to Ziirich. And 
there “ the negotiations ” rested again for the present. 

A second paragraph in Mr. Pendril’s letter contained another piece 
of intelligence entirely new. Mr. Michael Yanstone’s son (and only 
child), Mr. Noel Yanstone, had recently arrived in London, and was 
then staying in lodgings occupied by his cousin, Mr. George Bar- 
tram. Professional considerations had induced Mr. Pendril to pay 
a visit to the lodgings. He had been very kindly received by Mr. 
Bartram ; but had been informed by that gentleman that his cousin 
was not then in a condition to receive visitors. Mr. Noel Yanstone 


130 


NO NAME. 

had been suffering, for some years past, from a wearing and obstl 
nate malady ; he had come to England expressly to obtain the best 
medical advice, and he still felt the fatigue of the journey so se- 
verely as to be confined to his bed. Under these circumstances 
Mr. Pendril had no alternative but to take his leave. An interview 
with Mr. Noel Yanstone might have cleared up some of the difficult 
ties in connection with his father’s instructions. As events had 
turned out, there was no help for it but to wait for a few days more. 

The days passed, the empty days of solitude and suspense. At 
last, a third letter from the lawyer announced the long-delayed con- 
clusion of the correspondence. The final answer had been received 
from Zurich, and Mr. Pendril would personally communicate it at 
Combe-Raven on the afternoon of the next day. 

That next day was Wednesday, the twelfth of August. The 
weather had changed in the night; and the sun rose waterj 
through mist and cloud. By noon the sky was overcast at all 
points; the temperature was sensibly colder; and the rain poured 
down, straight and soft and steady, on the thirsty earth. Toward 
three o’clock, Miss Garth and Norah entered the morning-room, to 
await Mr. Pendril’s arrival. They were joined shortly afterward b^ 
Magdalen. In half an hour more the familiar fall of the iron latcli 
in the socket reached their ears from the fence beyond the shrubbery 
Mr. Pendril and Mr. Clare advanced into view along the garden 
path, walking arm in arm through the rain, sheltered by the same 
umbrella. The lawyer bowed as they passed the windows; Mr, 
Clare walked straight on, deep in his own thoughts — noticing 
nothing. 

After a delay which seemed interminable ; after a weary scraping 
of wet feet on the hall mat ; after a mysterious, muttered interchange 
of question and answer outside the door, the two came in — Mr. Clan* 
leading the way. The old man walked straight up to the table., 
without any preliminary greeting, and looked across it at the three 
women, with a stern pity for them, in his rugged, wrinkled face. 

u Bad news,” he said. “ I am an enemy to all unnecessary sus - 
pense. Plainness is kindness in such a case as this. I mean to be 
kind — and I tell you plainly — bad news.” 

Mr. Pendril followed him. He shook hands, in silence, with Miss 
Garth and the two sisters, and took a seat near them. Mr. Clare 
placed himself apart on a chair by the window. The gray rainy 
light fell soft and sad on the faces of Norah and Magdalen, who 
sat together opposite to him. Miss Garth had placed herself a lit- 
tle behind them, in partial shadow ; and the lawyer’s quiet face was 
seen in profile, close beside her. So the four occupants of the room 
appeared to Mr. Clare, as he sat apart in his corner ; his long claw- 
like fingers interlaced on his knee ; his dark vigilant eyes fixed 


NO NAME. 


131 


seal Singly now on one face, now on another. The dripping rustle 
of the rain among the leaves, and the clear, ceaseless tick of the 
clock on the mantel-piece, made the minute of silence which fol- 
lowed the settling of the persons present in their places indescriba- 
bly oppressive. It was a relief to every one when Mr. Pendril spoke. 

“ Mr. Clare has told you already,” he began, “ that I am the bearer 
of bad news. I am grieved to say, Miss Garth, that your doubts, 
when I last saw you, were better founded than my hopes. What 
that heartless elder brother was in his youth, he is still in his old 
age. In all my unhappy experience of the worst side of human na- 
ture, I have never met with a man so utterly dead to every consid- 
eration of mercy as Michael Vanstone.” 

“Do you mean that he takes the whole of his brother’s fortune, 
and makes no provision whatever for his brother’s children ?” asked 
Miss Garth. 

“ He offers a sum of money for present emergencies,” replied Mr. 
Pendril, “ so meanly and disgracefully insufficient, that I am ashamed 
to mention it.” 

“ And nothing for the future ?” 

“ Absolutely nothing.” 

As that answer was given, the same thought passed, at the same 
moment, through Miss Garth’s mind and through Norah’s. The 
decision, which deprived both the sisters alike of the resources of 
fortune, did not end there for the younger of the two. Michael 
Yanstone’s merciless resolution had virtually pronounced the sen- 
tence which dismissed Frank to China, and which destroyed all 
present hope of Magdalen’s marriage. As the words passed the 
lawyer’s lips, Miss Garth and Norah looked at Magdalen anxiously. 
Her face turned a shade paler — but not a feature of it moved ; not 
a word escaped her. Norah, who held her sister’s hand in her own, 
felt it tremble for a moment, and then turn cold — and that was all. 

“ Let me mention plainly what I have done,” resumed Mr. Pen- 
dril ; “lam very desirous you should not think that I have left any 
effort untried. When I wrote to Michael Vanstone, in the first in- 
stance, I did not confine myself to the usual formal statement. I 
put before him, plainly and earnestly, every one of the circumstances 
under which he has become possessed of his brother’s fortune. 
When I received the answer, referring me to his written instruc- 
tions to his lawyer in London — and when a copy of those instruc- 
tions was placed in my hands — I positively declined, on becoming 
acquainted with them, to receive the writer’s decision as final'. I 
induced the solicitor, on the other side, to accord us a farther term 
of delay ; I attempted to see Mr. Noel Vanstone in London for the 
purpose of obtaining his intercession ; and, failing in that, I myself 
wrote to his father for the second time. The answer referred me. in 


132 


NO NAME. 


insolently curt terms, to the instructions already communicated ; de- 
clared those instructions to be final ; and declined any further cor^ 
respondence with me. There is the beginning and the end of the 
negotiation. If I have overlooked any means of touching this heart- 
less man — tell me, and those means shall be tried.” 

He looked at Norah. She pressed her sister’s hand encouraging- 
ly, and answered for both of them. 

“ I speak for my sister, as well as for myself,” she said, with her 
color a little heightened, with her natural gentleness of manner just 
touched by a quiet, uncomplaining sadness. “ You have done all 
that could be done, Mr. Pendril. We have tried to restrain our- 
selves from hoping too confidently ; and we are deeply grateful for 
your kindness, at a time when kindness is sorely needed by both 
of us.” 

Magdalen’s hand returned the pressure of her sister’s — withdrew 
itself — trifled for a moment impatiently with the arrangement of her 
dress — then suddenly moved the chair closer to the table. Leaning 
one arm on it (with the hand fast clenched), she looked across at 
Mr. Pendril. Her face, always remarkable for its want of color, w r as 
now startling to contemplate, in its blank, bloodless pallor. But the 
light in her large gray eyes was bright and steady as ever ; and her 
voice, though low in tone, was clear and resolute in accent as she 
addressed the lawyer in these terms : 

“ I understood you to say, Mr. Pendril, that my father’s brother 
had sent his written orders to London, and that you had a copy. 
Have you preserved it ?” 

“ Certainly.” 

u Have you got it about you ?” 

“ I have.” 

“ May I see it ?” 

Mr. Pendril hesitated, and looked uneasily from Magdalen to 
Miss Garth, and from Miss Garth back again to Magdalen. 

“ Pray oblige me by not pressing your request,” he said. “It is 
surely enough that you know the result of the instructions. Why 
should you agitate yourself to no purpose by reading them ? They 
are expressed so cruelly ; they show such abominable want of feel- 
ing, that I really can not prevail upon myself to let you see them.” 

“Iam sensible of your kindness, Mr. Pendril, in wishing to spare 
me pain. But I can bear pain ; I promise to distress nobody. Will 
you excuse me if I repeat my request ?” 

She held out her hand — the soft, white, virgin hand that had 
touched nothing to soil it or harden it yet. 

“ Oh, Magdalen, think again !” said Norah. 

“ You distress Mr. Pendril,” added Miss Garth ; “ you distress us 

all.” 


NO NAME. 


133 


“ There can be no end gained,” pleaded the lawyer — “ forgive me 
for saying so — there can really be no useful end gained by my show- 
ing you the instructions.” 

(“ Fools !” said Mr. Clare to himself. “ Have they no eyes to see 
that she means to have her own way ?”) 

“ Something tells me there is an end to be gained,” persisted 
Magdalen. “ This decision is a very serious one. It is more serious 
to me — ” She looked round at Mr. Clare, who sat closely watching 
her, and instantly looked back again, with the first outward be- 
trayal of emotion which had escaped her yet. “ It is even more 
serious to me,” she resumed, “ for private reasons — than it is to my 
sister. I know nothing yet but that our father’s brother has taken 
our fortunes from us. He must have some motives of his own for such 
conduct as that. It is not fair to him, or fair to us, to keep those 
motives concealed. He has deliberately robbed Norah, and robbed 
me ; and I think we have a right, if we wish it, to know why ?” 

“ I don’t wish it,” said Norah. 

“ I do,” said Magdalen ; and once more she held out her hand. 

At this point Mr. Clare roused himself, and interfered for the first 
time. 

“ You have relieved your conscience,” he said, addressing the 
lawyer. “Give her the right she claims. It is her right — if she 
will have it.” 

Mr. Pendril quietly took the written instructions from his pocket. 
“ I have warned you,” he said — and handed the papers across the 
table, without another word. One of the pages of writing was fold- 
ed down at the corner ; and at that folded page the manuscript 
opened, when Magdalen first turned the leaves. “ Is this the place 
which refers to my sister and myself?” she inquired. Mr. Pendril 
bowed ; and Magdalen smoothed out the manuscript before her on 
the table. 

“ Will you decide, Norah ?” she asked, turning to her sister. 
“ Shall I read this aloud, or shall I read it to myself ?” 

“ To yourself,” said Miss Garth ; answering for Norah, who looked 
at her in mute perplexity and distress. 

“ It shall be as you wish,” said Magdalen. With that reply, she 
turned again to the manuscript, and read these lines : 

u ..... You are now in possession of my wishes in relation to 
the property in money, and to the sale of the furniture, carriages, 
horses, and so forth. The last point left, on which it is necessary 
for me to instruct you, refers to the persons inhabiting the house, 
and to certain preposterous claims on their behalf, set up by a solic- 
itor named Pendril ; who has, no doubt, interested reasons of his 
own for making application to me. 


134 


NO NAME. 


“I understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate 
children ; both of them young women, who are of an age to earn 
their own livelihood. Various considerations, all equally irregular, 
have been urged in respect to these persons by the solicitor repre- 
senting them. Be so good as to tell him that neither you nor I have 
any thing to do with questions of mere sentiment ; and then state 
plainly, for his better information, what the motives are which regu- 
late my conduct, and what the provision is which I feel myself jus 
tilled in making for the two young women. Your instructions on 
both these points you will find detailed in the next paragraph. 

“ I wish the persons concerned to know, once for all, how I re- 
gard the circumstances which have placed my late brother’s property 
at my disposal. Let them understand that I consider those circum- 
stances to be a Providential interposition, which has restored to 
me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine. I receive 
the money, not only as my right, but also as a proper compensation 
for the injustice which I suffered from my father, and a proper pen- 
alty paid by my younger brother for the vile intrigue by which he 
succeeded in disinheriting me. His conduct, when a young man, 
was uniformly discreditable in all the relations of life ; and what it 
then was, it continued to be (on the showing of his own legal repre- 
sentative) after the time when I ceased to hold any communication 
with him. He appears to have systematically imposed a woman on 
Society as his wife who was not his wife, and to have completed 
the outrage on morality by afterward marrying her. Such conduct 
as this has called down a Judgment on himself and his children. 
I will not invite retribution on my own head, by assisting those 
children to continue the imposition which their parents practiced, 
and by helping them to take a place in the world to which they 
are not entitled. Let them, as becomes their birth, gain their bread 
in situations. If they show themselves disposed to accept their 
proper position, I will assist them to start virtuously in life, by a 
present of one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to 
pay them, on their personal application, with the necessary acknowl- 
edgment of receipt; and on the express understanding that the 
transaction, so completed, is to be the beginning and the end of my 
connection with them. The arrangements under which they quit the 
house I leave to your discretion ; and I have only to add that my 
decision on this matter, as on all other matters, is positive and final.” 

Line by line — without once looking up from the pages before her 
— Magdalen read those atrocious sentences through, from beginning 
to end. The other persons assembled in the room, all eagerly look- 
ing at her together, saw the dress rising and falling faster and faster 
over her bosom — saw the hand in which she lightly held the manu- 


NO NAME. 


135 


script at the outset close unconsciously on the paper, and crush it, 
as she advanced nearer and nearer to the end — but detected no oth- 
er outward signs of what was passing within her. As soon as she 
had done, she silently pushed the manuscript away, and put her 
hands on a sudden over her face. When she withdrew them, all 
the four persons in the room noticed a change in her. Something 
in her expression had altered, subtly and silently ; something which 
made the familiar features suddenly look strange, even to her sister 
and Miss Garth ; something, through all after years, never to be for- 
gotten in connection with that day — and never to be described. 

The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril. 

“ May I ask one more favor,” she said, “ before you enter on your 
business arrangements ?” 

Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent. Mag- 
dalen’s resolution to possess herself of the Instructions did not ap- 
pear to have produced a favorable impression on the lawyer’s mind. 

“You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our inter- 
ests, when you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone,” she continued. 
“ You said you had told him all the circumstances. I want — if you 
will allow me — to be made quite sure of what he really knew about 
us when he sent these orders to his lawyer. Did he know that my 
father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes to my sis- 
ter and myself ?” 

“ He did know it,” said Mr. Pendril. 

u Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this help- 
less position ?” 

“ I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he mar- 
ried, of the necessity for making another will.” 

“ And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr. 
Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death ?” 

“ He knew that also.” 

“ Did he know that my father’s untiring goodness and kindness 
to both of us — ” 

Her voice faltered for the first time : she sighed, and put her 
hand to her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her ; Miss 
Garth spoke entreatingly to her ; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching her 
more and more earnestly. She answered her sister’s remonstrance 
with a faint smile. “ I will keep my promise,” she said ; “ I will 
distress nobody.” With that reply, she turned again to Mr. Pen- 
dril ; and steadily reiterated the question — but in another form of 
words. 

“ Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father’s great anxiety 
was to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?” 

“ He knew it in your father’s own words. I sent him an extract 
from your father’s last letter to me,” 


136 


NO NAME. 


“ The letter which asked you to come for God’s sake, and relieve 
him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided 
for ? The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he 
left us disinherited ?” 

“ That letter and those words.” 

She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer’s 
face. 

“ I want to fasten it all in my mind,” she said, “ before I go on. 
Mr. Michael Yanstone knew of the first will ; he knew what pre- 
vented the making of the second will ; he knew of the letter, and 
he read the words. What did he know of besides ? Did you tell 
him of my mother’s last illness ? Did you say that her share in the 
money would have been left to us, if she could have lifted her dying 
hand in your presence ? Did you try to make him ashamed of the 
cruel law which calls girls in our situation Nobody’s Children, and 
which allows him to use us as he is using us now ?” 

“ I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them doubt- 
ful ; I left none of them out.” 

She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the Instructions, and 
slowly folded it up again, in the shape in which it had been pre- 
sented to her. “ I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril.” With 
those words, she bowed, and gently pushed the manuscript back 
across the table ; then turned to her sister. 

“ Norah,” she said, “ if we both of us live to grow old, and if you 
ever forget all that we owe to Michael Yanstone — come to me, and 
I will remind you.” 

She rose and walked across the room by herself to the wdndow. 
As she passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw -like 
fingers, and caught her fast by the arm before she w r as aware of 
him. 

“ What is this mask of yours hiding ?” he asked, forcing her to 
bend to him, and looking close into her face. “ Which of the ex- 
tremes of human temperature does your courage start from — the 
dead cold or the white hot ?” 

She shrank back from him, and turned away her head in silence. 
She would have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own 
thoughts from any man alive but Frank’s father. He dropped her 
arm as suddenly as he had taken it, and let her go on to the win- 
dow. “ No,” he said to himself, “ not the cold extreme, whatever 
else it may be. So much the worse for her, and for all belonging to 
her.” 

There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle 
of the rain and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of 
silence. Mr. Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket, con- 
sidered a little, and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth, re* 


NO NAME. 


m 


called their attention to the present and pressing necessities of the 
time. 

“ Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged,” he said, “ by 
painful references to the past. We shall be better employed in settling 
our arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return to town this 
evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you ; pray tell me 
what trouble and what responsibility I can take off your hands.” 

For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be 
capable of answering him. Magdalen’s reception of the news which 
annihilated the marriage prospect that her father’s own lips had 
placed before her not a month since, had bewildered and dismayed 
them alike. They had summoned their courage to meet the shock 
of her passionate grief, or to face the harder trial of witnessing her 
speechless despair. But they were not prepared for her invincible 
resolution to read the Instructions ; for the terrible questions which 
she had put to the lawyer ; for her immovable determination to fix 
all the circumstances in her mind, under which Michael Yanstone’s 
decision had been pronounced. There she stood at the window, an 
unfathomable mystery to the sister who had never been parted from 
her, to the governess who had trained her from a child. Miss Garth 
remembered the dark doubts which had crossed her mind on the 
day when she and Magdalen had met in the garden. Norah looked 
forward to the coming time, with the first serious dread of it on her 
sister’s account, which she had felt yet. Both had hitherto remain- 
ed passive, in despair of knowing what to do. Both were now si- 
lent, in despair of knowing what to say. 

Mr. Pendril patiently and kindly helped them, by returning to 
the subject of their future plans for the second time. 

“ I am sorry to press any business matters on your attention,” he 
said, “ when you are necessarily unfitted to deal with them. But I 
must take my instructions back to London with me to-night. With 
reference, in the first place, to the disgraceful pecuniary offer, to 
which I have already alluded. The younger Miss Yanstone having 
read the Instructions, needs no further information from my lips. 
The elder will, I hope, excuse me if I tell her (what I should be 
ashamed to tell her, but that it is a matter of necessity), that Mr. 
Michael Yanstone’s provision for his brother’s children begins and 
ends with an offer to each of them of one hundred pounds.” 

Norah ’s face crimsoned with indignation. She started to her 
feet, as if Michael Yanstone had been present in the room, and had 
personally insulted her. 

“ I see,” said the lawyer, wishing to spare her ; “ I may tell Mr. 
Michael Yanstone you refuse the money.” 

“ Tell him,” she broke out passionately, “ if I was starving by the 
roadside, I wouldn’t touch a farthing of it I” 


138 


NO NAME. 


“ Shall I notify your refusal also ?” asked Mr. Pendril, speaking to 
Magdalen next. 

She turned round from the window — but kept her face in shadow, 
by standing close against it with her back to the light. 

“ Tell him, on my part,” she said, “ to think again before he starts 
me in life with a hundred pounds. I will give him time to think.” 
She spoke those strange words with a marked emphasis ; and turn- 
ing back quickly to the window, hid her face from the observation 
of every one in the room. 

“ You both refuse the offer,” said Mr. Pendril, taking out his pen- 
cil, and making his professional note of the decision. As he shut 
up his pocket-book, he glanced toward Magdalen doubtfully. She 
had roused in him the latent distrust which is a lawyer’s second 
nature : he had his suspicions of her looks ; he had his suspicions 
of her language. Her sister seemed to have more influence over her 
than Miss Garth. He resolved to speak privately to her sister before 
he went away. 

While the idea was passing through his mind, his attention was 
claimed by another question from Magdalen. 

“ Is he an old man ?” she asked, suddenly, without turning round 
from the window. 

“ If you mean Mr. Michael Yanstone, he is seventy-five or seventy- 
six years of age.” 

“You spoke of his son a little while since. Has he any other 
sons — or daughters ?” 

“None.” 

“ Do you know any thing of his wife ?” 

“ She has been dead for many years.” 

There was a pause. “ Why do you ask these questions ?” said 
Norah. 

“ I beg your pardon,” replied Magdalen, quietly ; “ I w T on’t ask 
any more.” 

For the third time, Mr. Pendril returned to the business of the 
interview. 

“ The servants must not be forgotten,” he said. “ They must be 
settled with and discharged : I will give them the necessary expla- 
nation before I leave. As for the house, no questions connected with 
it need trouble you. The carriages and horses, the furniture and 
plate, and so on, must simply be left on the premises to await Mr. 
Michael Yanstone’s further orders. But any possessions, Miss Yan- 
stone, personally belonging to you or to your sister — jewelry and 
dresses, and any little presents which may have been made to you — 
are entirely at your disposal. With regard to the time of your de- 
parture, I understand that a month, or more, will elapse before Mr. 
Michael Yanstone can leave Zurich; and I am sure I only do his 
solicitor justice in saying — ” 


NO NAME. 


139 


“ Excuse me, Mr k Pendril,” interposed Norah ; “ I think I under- 
stand, from what you have just said, that our house and every thing 
in it belongs to — ?” She stopped, as if the mere utterance of the 
man’s name was abhorrent to her. 

u To Michael Yanstone,” said Mr. Pendril. “ The house goes to 
him with the rest of the property.” 

u Then I, for one, am ready to leave it to-morrow !” 

Magdalen started at the window, as her sister spoke, and looked 
at Mr. Clare, with the first open signs of anxiety and alarm which 
she had shown yet. 

“Don’t be angry with me,” she whispered, stooping over the old 
man with a sudden humility of look, and a sudden nervousness of 
manner. “I can’t go without seeing Frank first !” 

“You shall see him,” replied Mr. Clare. “I am here to speak to 
you about it, when the business is done.” 

“ It is quite unnecessary to hurry your departure, as you propose,” 
continued Mr. Pendril, addressing Norah. “ I can safely assure you 
that a week hence will be time enough.” 

“If this is Mr. Michael Yanstone’s house,” repeated Norah, “I am 
ready to leave it to-morrow.” 

She impatiently quitted her chair, and seated herself farther 
away on the sofa. As she laid her hand on the back of it, her face 
changed. There, at the head of the sofa, were the cushions which 
had supported her mother when she lay down for the last time to 
repose. There, at the foot of the sofa, was the clumsy, old fash- 
ioned arm-chair, which had been her father’s favorite seat on rainy 
days, when she and her sister used to amuse him at the piano oppo- 
site, by playing his favorite tunes. A heavy sigh, which she tried 
vainly to repress, burst from her lips. “ Oh,” she thought, “ I had 
forgotten these old friends ! How shall we part from them when 
the time comes !” 

“ May I inquire, Miss Yanstone, whether you and your sister have 
formed any definite plans for the future ?” asked Mr. Pendril. “ Have 
you thought of any place of residence ?” 

“ I may take it on myself, sir,” said Miss Garth, “ to answer your 
question for them. When they leave this house, they leave it with 
me. My home is their home, and my bread is their bread. Their 
parents honored me, trusted me, and loved me. For twelve happy 
years they never let me remember that I was their governess ; they 
only let me know myself as their companion and their Mend. My 
memory of them is the memory of unvarying gentleness and gen- 
erosity ; and my life shall pay the debt of my gratitude to their or- 
phan children.” 

Norah rose hastily from the sofa ; Magdalen impetuously left the 
window. For once, there was no contrast in the conduct of the sis- 


140 


NO NAME. 


ters. For once, the same impulse moved their hearts, the same ear 
nest feeling inspired their words. Miss Garth waited until the first 
outburst of emotion had passed away ; then rose, and, taking Norah 
and Magdalen each by the hand, addressed herself to Mr. Pendril 
and Mr. Clare. She spoke with perfect self-possession ; strong in 
her artless unconsciousness of her own good action. 

“ Even such a trifle as my own story,” she said, “ is of some im- 
portance at such a moment as this. I wish you both, gentlemen, to 
understand that I am not promising more to the daughters of your 
old friend than I can perform. When I first came to this house, I 
entered it under such independent circumstances as are not com- 
mon in the lives of governesses. In my younger days, I was asso- 
ciated in teaching with my elder sister : we established a school in 
London, which grew to be a large and prosperous one. I only left 
it, and became a private governess, because the heavy responsibility 
of the school was more than my strength could bear. I left my 
share in the profits untouched, and I possess a pecuniary interest in 
our establishment to this day. That is my story, in few words. 
When we leave this house, I propose that we shall go back to the 
school in London, which is still prosperously directed by my elder 
sister. We can live there as quietly as we please, until time has 
helped us to bear our affliction better than we can bear it now. If 
Norah’s and Magdalen’s altered prospects oblige them to earn their 
own independence, I can help them to earn it, as a gentleman’s 
daughters should. The best families in this land are glad to ask 
my sister’s advice where the interests of their children’s home-train- 
ing are concerned ; and I answer, beforehand, for her hearty desire 
to serve Mr. Yanstone’s daughters, as I answer for my own. That 
is the future which my gratitude to their father and mother, and 
my love for themselves, now offers to them. If you think my pro- 
posal, gentlemen, a fit and fair proposal — and I see in your faces 
that you do — let us not make the hard necessities of our position 
harder still, by any useless delay in meeting them at once. Let us 
do what we must do ; let us act on Norah’s decision, and leave this 
house to-morrow. You mentioned the servants just now, Mr. Pen- 
dril : I am ready to call them together in the next room, and to as- 
sist you in the settlement of their claims, whenever you please.” 

Without waiting for the lawyer’s answer, without leaving the sis- 
ters time to realize their own terrible situation, she moved at once 
toward the door. It was her wise resolution to meet the coming 
trial by doing much and saying little. Before she could leave the 
room, Mr. Clare followed, and stopped her on the threshold. 

“ I never envied a woman’s feelings before,” said the old man. 
“It may surprise you to hear it; but I envy yours. Wait ! I have 
something more to say. There is an obstacle still left — the everlast- 


NO NAME. 


141 


ing obstacle of Frank. Help me to sweep him off. Take the elder 
sister along with you and the lawyer, and leave me here to have 
it out with the younger. I want to see what metal she’s really 
made of.” 

While Mr. Clare was addressing these words to Miss Garth, Mr. 
Pendril had taken the opportunity of speaking to Norah. “ Before 
I go back to town,” he said, “ I should like to have a word with 
you in private. From what has passed to-day, Miss Yanstone, I 
have formed a very high opinion of your discretion ; and, as an old 
friend of your father’s, I want to take the freedom of speaking to 
you about your sister.” 

Before Norah could answer, she was summoned, in compliance 
with Mr. Clare’s request, to the conference with the servants. Mr. 
Pendril followed Miss Garth, as a matter of course. When the three 
were out in the hall, Mr. Clare re-entered the room, closed the door, 
and signed peremptorily to Magdalen to take a chair. 

See obeyed him in silence. He took a turn up and down the 
room, with his hands in the side-pockets of the long, loose, shape- 
less coat which he habitually wore. 

“ How old are you ?” he said, stopping suddenly, and speaking 
to her with the whole breadth of the room between them. 

“ I was eighteen last birthday,” she answered, humbly, without 
looking up at him. 

“ You have shown extraordinary courage for a girl of eighteen. 
Have you got any of that courage left ?” 

She clasped her handsxtogether, and wrung them hard. A few 
tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks. 

“ I can’t give Frank up,” she said, faintly. “ You don’t care for 
me, I know ; but you used to care for my father. Will you try to 
be kind to me for my father’s sake ?” 

The last words died away in a whisper ; she could say no more. 
Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman’s love pos- 
sesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or 
sorrow of her life, as she felt it then. Never had she so tenderly 
associated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that 
moment. Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion 
through which women behold the man of their choice — the atmos- 
phere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish, and 
mean in Frank’s nature — surrounded him with a brighter halo than 
now, when she was pleading with the father for the possession of 
the son. “ Oh, don’t ask me to give him up !” she said, trying to 
take courage, and shuddering from head to foot. In the next in- 
stant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a 
flash of lightning. “ I won’t give him up !” she burst out violently. 
* No ! not if a thousand fathers ask me !” 


142 


NO NAME. 


I am one father,” said Mr. Clare. “ And I don’t ask you.” 

In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected 
words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to throw 
her arms round his neck. She might as well have attempted to 
move the house from its foundations. He took her by the shoulders 
and put her back in her chair. His inexorable eyes looked her into 
submission ; and his lean forefinger shook at her wamingly, as if he 
was quieting a fractious child. 

“ Hug Frank,” he said ; “ don’t hug me. I haven’t done with 
you yet ; when I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like. 
Wait, and compose yourself.” 

He left her. His hands went back into his pockets, and his mo- 
notonous march up and down the room began again. 

“ Ready ?” he asked, stopping short after a while. She tried to 
answer. “ Take two minutes more,” he said, and resumed his walk 
with the regularity of clock-work. “ These are the creatures,” he 
thought to himself, “ into whose keeping men otherwise sensible 
give the happiness of their lives. Is there any other object in crea- 
tion, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does ?” 

He stopped before her once more. Her breathing was easier ; the 
dark flush on her face was dying out again. 

“Ready?” he repeated. “Yes; ready at last. Listen to me; 
and let’s get it over. I don’t ask you to give Frank up. I ask you 
to wait.” 

“ I will wait,” she said. “ Patiently, willingly.” 

“ Will you make Frank wait ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Will you send him to China ?” 

Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands 
again, in silence. Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and march- 
ed straight up to it on the spot. 

“ I don’t pretend to enter into your feelings for Frank, or Frank’s 
for you,” he said. “ The subject doesn't interest me. But I do pre- 
tend to state two plain truths. It is one plain truth that you can’t 
be married till you have money enough to pay for the roof that 
shelters you, the clothes that cover you, and the victuals you eat. 
It is another plain truth that you can’t find the money ; that I can’t 
find the money ; and that Frank’s only chance of finding it, is go- 
ing to China. If I tell him to go, he’ll sit in a corner and cry. If 
I insist, he’ll say Yes, and deceive me. If I go a step further, and 
see him on board ship with my own eyes, he’ll slip off in the pilot’s 
boat, and sneak back secretly to you. That’s his disposition.” 

“ No !” said Magdalen. “ It’s not his disposition ; it’s his love for 
Me.” 

“ Call it what you like,” retorted Mr. Clare. “ Sneak or Sweet 




I 


I 


NO NAME. 


145 


heart — he’s too slippery, in either capacity, for my fingers to hold 
him. My shutting the door won’t keep him from coming back. 
Your shutting the door will. Have you the courage to shut it ? 
Are you fond enough of him not to stand in his light ?” 

“ Fond ! I would die for him !” 

“ Will you send him to China ?” 

She sighed bitterly. 

“ Have a little pity for me,” she said. “ I have lost my father ; I 
have lost my mother ; I have lost my fortune — and now I am to lose 
Frank. You don’t like women, I know; but try to help me with a 
little pity. I don’t say it’s not for his own interests to send him to 
China ; I only say it’s hard — very, very hard on me.” 

Mr. Clare had been deaf to her violence, insensible to her caresses, 
blind to her tears ; but under the tough integument of his philoso- 
phy, he had a heart — and it answered that hopeless appeal ; it felt 
those touching words. 

“ I don’t deny that your case is a hard one,” he said. “ I don’t 
want to make it harder : I only ask you to do in Frank’s interests 
what Frank is too weak to do for himself. It’s no fault of yours; 
it’s no fault of mine — but it’s not the less true, that the fortune you 
were to have brought him has changed owners.” 

She suddenly looked up, with a furtive light in her eyes, with a 
threatening smile on her lips. 

“ It may change owners again,” she said. 

Mr. Clare saw the alteration in her expression, and heard the tones 
of her voice. But the words were spoken low ; spoken as if to her- 
self — they failed to reach him across the breadth of the room. He 
stopped instantly in his walk, and asked what she had said. 

“ Nothing,” she answered, turning her head away toward the win-' 
dow, and looking out mechanically at the falling rain. “ Only my 
own thoughts.” 

Mr. Clare resumed his walk, and returned to his subject. 

“ It’s your interest,” he went on, “ as well as Frank’s interest, that 
he should go. He may make money enough to marry you in China ; 
he can’t make it here. If he stops at home, he’ll be the ruin of both 
of you. He’ll shut his eyes to every consideration of prudence, and 
pester you to marry him ; and when he has carried his point, he will 
be the first to turn round afterward, and complain that you’re a bur- 
den on him. Hear me out! You’re in love with Frank — I’m not, 
and I know him. Put you two together often enough ; give him 
time enough to hug, cry, pester, and plead; and I’ll tell you what 
the end will be — you’ll marry him.” 

He had touched the right string at last. It rung back in answer, 
before he could add another word. 

“ Yon don’t know me,” she said, firmly. 


“You don’t know what 


148 


NO NAME. 


I can suffer for Frank’s sake. He shall never marry me, till I can be 
what my father said I should be — the making of his fortune. He 
shall take no burden, when he takes me ; I promise you that ! I’ll 
be the good angel of Frank’s life ; I’ll not go a penniless girl to him, 
and drag him down.” She abruptly left her seat, advanced a few 
steps toward Mr. Clare, and stopped in the middle of the room. 
Her arms fell helpless on either side of her, and she burst into tears. 
“ He shall go,” she said. “ If my heart breaks in doing it, I’ll tell 
him to-morrow that we must say Good-bye !” 

Mr. Clare at once advanced to meet her, and held out his hand. 

“ I’ll help you,” he said. “ Frank shall hear every word that has 
passed between us. When he comes to-morrow, he shall know, be- 
forehand, that he comes to say Good-bye.” 

She took his hand in both her own — hesitated — looked at him — 
and pressed it to her bosom. “ May I ask a favor of you, before 
you go ?” she said, timidly. He tried to take his hand from her ; 
but she knew her advantage, and held it fast. “ Suppose there 
should be some change for the better ?” she went on. “ Suppose 1 
could come to Frank, as my father said I should come to him — ?” 

Before she could complete the question, Mr. Clare made a second 
effort, and withdrew his hand. “As your father said you should 
come to him ?” he repeated, looking at her attentively. 

“ Yes,” she replied. “ Strange things happen sometimes. If 
strange things happen to me, will you let Frank come back before 
the five years are out ?” 

What did she mean ? Was she clinging desperately to the hope 
of melting Michael Yanstone’s heart ? Mr. Clare could draw no 
other conclusion from what she had just said to him. At the be- 
ginning of the interview, he would have roughly dispelled her de- 
lusion. At the end of the interview, he left her compassionately in 
possession of it. 

“ You are hoping against all hope,” he said ; “but if it gives you 
courage, hope on. If this impossible good fortune of yours ever 
happens, tell me, and Frank shall come back. In the mean time — ” 

“ In the mean time,” she interposed, sadly, “ you have my promise.” 

Once more Mr. Clare’s sharp eyes searched her face attentively. 

“ I will trust your promise,” he said. “ You shall see Frank to- 
morrow.” 

She went back thoughtfully to her chair, and sat down again in 
silence. Mr. Clare made for the door, before any formal leave-tak- 
ing could pass between them. “ Deep !” he thought to himself, as 
he looked back at her before he went out ; “ only eighteen ; and too 
deep for my sounding !” 

In the hall he found Norah, waiting anxiously to hear what had 
happened. 


NO NAME. 


147 


“ Is it all over ?>’ she asked. “ Does Frank go to China ?” 

“ Be careful how you manage that sister of yours,” said Mr. Clare, 
without noticing the question. “ She has one great misfortune to 
contend with : she’s not made for the ordinary jog-trot of a wom- 
an’s life. I don’t say I can see straight to the end of the good or 
the evil in her — I only warn you, her future will be no common one.” 

An hour later, Mr. Pendril left the house ; and, by that night’s 
post, Miss Garth dispatched a letter to her sister in London. 

THE END OF THE FIRST SCENE. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 


I. 

From Nor ah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril. 

“Westmoreland House, Kensington, 
“August 14th, 1846. 

“ Dear Mr. Pendril, — The date of this letter will show you that 
the last of many hard partings is over. We have left Combe-Raven ; 
we have said farewell to home. 

“ I have been thinking seriously of what you said to me on Wednes- 
day, before you went back to town. I entirely agree with you, that 
Miss Garth is more shaken by all she has gone through for our 
sakes, than she is herself willing to admit ; and that it is my duty, for 
the future, to spare her all the anxiety that I can on the subject of 
my sister and myself. This is very little to do for our dearest friend, 
for our second mother. Such as it is, I will do it with all my heart. 

“ But, forgive me for saying that I am as far as ever from agree- 
ing with you about Magdalen. I am so sensible, in our helpless 
position, of the importance of your assistance; so anxious to be 
worthy of the interest of my father’s trusted adviser and oldest 
friend, that I feel really and truly disappointed with myself for dif- 
fering with you — and yet I do differ. Magdalen is very strange, 
very unaccountable, to those who don’t know her intimately. I 
can understand that she has innocently misled you ; and that she 
has presented herself, perhaps, under her least favorable aspect. 
But that the clue to her language, and her conduct on Wednesday 
last, is to be found in such a feeling toward the man who has ruined 
us, as the feeling at which you hinted, is what I can not and will 


148 


NO NAME. 


not believe of my sister. If you knew, as I do, what a noble nature 
she has, you would not be surprised at this obstinate resistance of 
mine to your opinion. Will you try to alter it? I don’t mind what 
Mr. Clare says ; he believes in nothing. But I attach a very serious 
importance to what you say ; and, kind as I know your motives to 
be, it distresses me to think you are doing Magdalen an injustice. 

u Having relieved my mind of this confession, I may now come to 
the proper object of my letter. I promised, if you could not find 
leisure time to visit us to-day, to write and tell you all that happen- 
ed after you left us. The day has passed, without our seeing you. 
So I open my writing-case, and perform my promise. 

“ I am sorry to say that three of the women-servants — the house- 
maid, the kitchen-maid, and even our own maid (to whom I am sure 
we have always been kind) — took advantage of your having paid 
them their wages to pack up and go, as soon as your back was 
turned. They came to say good-bye with as much ceremony, and 
as little feeling, as if they were leaving the house under ordinary 
circumstances. The cook, for all her violent temper, behaved very 
differently : she sent up a message to say that she would stop and 
help us to the last. And Thomas (who has never yet been in any 
other place than ours) spoke so gratefully of my dear father’s un- 
varying kindness to him, and asked so anxiously to be allowed to 
go on serving us while his little savings lasted, that Magdalen and 
I forgot all formal considerations, and both shook hands with him. 
The poor lad went out of the room crying. I wish him well; I 
hope he will find a kind master and a good place. 

“ The long, quiet, rainy evening out-of-doors — our last evening at 
Combe-Raven — was a sad trial to us. I think winter-time would 
have weighed less on our spirits ; the drawn curtains, and the 
bright lamps, and the companionable fires would have helped us. 
We were only five in the house altogether — after having once been 
so many ! I can’t tell you how dreary the gray daylight looked, 
toward seven o’clock, in the lonely rooms, and on the noiseless stair- 
case. Surely, the prejudice in favor of long summer evenings is the 
prejudice of happy people? We did our best. We kept ourselves 
employed, and Miss Garth helped us. The prospect of preparing 
for our departure, which had seemed so dreadful earlier in the day, 
altered into the prospect of a refuge from ourselves, as the evening 
came on. We each tried at first to pack up in our own rooms — but 
the loneliness was more than we could bear. We carried all our 
possessions down stairs, and heaped them on the large dining-table, 
and so made our preparations together in the same room. I am 
sure we have taken nothing away which does not properly belong 
to us. 

“ Haying already mentioned to you my own conviction that Mag- 


NO NAME. 


149 


dalen was not herself when you saw her on Wednesday, I feel 
tempted to stop here, and give you an instance in proof of what I 
say. The little circumstance happened on Wednesday night, just 
before we went up to our rooms. 

“ After we had packed our dresses and our birthday presents, our 
books and our music, we began to sort our letters, which had got 
confused from being all placed on the table together. Some of my 
letters were mixed with Magdalen’s, and some of hers with mine. 
Among these last, I found a card, which had been given to my sis- 
ter early in the year, by an actor who managed an amateur theatrical 
performance in which she took a part. The man had given her the 
card, containing his name and address, in the belief that she would 
be invited to many more amusements of the same kind, and in the 
hope that she would recommend him as a superintendent on future 
occasions. I only relate these trifling particulars to show you how 
little worth keeping such a card could be, in such circumstances as 
ours. Naturally enough, I threw it away from me across the table, 
meaning to throw it on the floor. It fell short, close to the place 
in which Magdalen was sitting. She took it up, looked at it, and 
immediately declared that she would not have had this perfectly 
worthless thing destroyed for the world. She was almost angry 
with me for having thrown it away ; almost angry with Miss Garth 
for asking what she could possibly want with it ! Could there be 
any plainer proof than this that our misfortunes — falling so much 
more heavily on her than on me — have quite unhinged her, and 
worn her out? Surely her words and looks are not to be inter- 
preted against her, when she is not sufficiently mistress of herself 
to exert her natural judgment — when she shows the unreasonable 
petulance of a child on a question which is not of the slightest im- 
portance. 

“A little after eleven we went up stairs to try if we could get 
some rest. 

“ I drew aside the curtain of my window, and looked out. Oh, 
what a cruel last night it was ; no moon, no stars ; such deep dark- 
ness, that not one of the dear familiar objects in the garden was 
visible when I looked for them ; such deep stillness, that even my 
own movements about the room almost frightened me! I tried to 
lie down and sleep, but the sense of loneliness came again, and quite 
overpowered me. You will say I am old enough, at six-and-twenty, 
to have exerted more control over myself. I hardly know how it 
happened, but I stole into Magdalen’s room, just as I used to steal 
into it years and years ago, when we were children. She was not 
in bed ; she was sitting with her writing materials before her, think' 
ing. I said I wanted to be with her the last night ; and she kissed 
me, and told me to lie down, and promised soon to follow me. My 


150 


2*0 NAME. 


mind was a little quieted, and I fell asleep. It was daylight when 
I woke— and the first sight I saw was Magdalen, still sitting in the 
chair, and still thinking. She had never been to bed ; she had not 
slept all through the night. 

u 4 1 shall sleep when we have left Combe-Raven,’ she said. 1 I shall 
be better when it is all over, and I have bid Frank good-bye.’ She 
had in her hand our father’s will, and the letter he wrote to you ; 
and when she had done speaking, she gave them into my possession. 
I was the eldest (she said), and those last precious relics ought to 
be in my keeping. I tried to propose to her that we should divide 
them ; but she shook her head. ‘ I have copied for myself,’ was her 
answer, ‘ all that he says of us in the will, and all that he says in the 
letter.’ She told me this, and took from her bosom a tiny white silk 
bag, which she had made in the night, and in which she had put the 
extracts, so as to keep them always about her. 1 This tells me in his 
own words what his last wishes were for both of us,’ she said ; ‘ and 
this is all I want for the future.’ 

u These are trifles to dwell on ; and I am almost surprised at 
myself for not feeling ashamed to trouble you with them. But, 
since I have known what your early connection was with my father 
and mother, I have learned to think of you (and, I suppose, to write 
to you) as an old friend. And, besides, I have it so much at heart 
to change your opinion of Magdalen, that I can’t help telling you 
the smallest things about her which may, in my judgment, end in 
making you think of her as I do. 

“ When breakfast- time came (on Thursday morning), we were sur- 
prised to find a strange letter on the table. Perhaps I ought to 
mention it to you, in case of any future necessity for your interfer- 
ence. It was addressed to Miss Garth, on paper with the deepest 
mourning-border round it; and the writer was the same man who 
followed us on our way home from a walk one day last spring — 
Captain Wragge. His object appears to be, to assert once more his 
audacious claim to a family connection with my poor mother, under 
cover of a letter of condolence, which it is an insolence in such a 
person to have written at all. He expresses as much sympathy — 
on his discovery of our affliction in the newspaper — as if he had 
been really intimate with us ; and he begs to know, in a postscript 
(being evidently in total ignorance of all that has really happened), 
whether it is thought desirable that he should be present, among 
the other relatives, at the reading of the will ! The address he 
gives, at which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, 
‘ Post-office, Birmingham.’ This is all I have to tell you on the 
subject. Both the letter and the writer seem to me to be equally 
unworthy of the slightest notice, on our part or on yours. 

“After breakfast Magdalen left us, and went by herself into the 


NO NAME. 


151 


morning-room. The weather being still showery, we had arranged 
that Francis Clare should see her in that room, when he presented 
himself to take his leave. I was up stairs when he came ; and I re- 
mained up stairs for more than half an hour afterward, sadly anx- 
ious, as you may well believe, on Magdalen’s account. 

“At the end of the half-hour or more, I came down stairs. As I 
reached the landing, I suddenly heard her voice, raised entreatingly, 
and calling on him by his name — then loud sobs — then a frightful 
laughing and screaming, both together, that rang through the house. 
I instantly ran into the room, and found Magdalen on the sofa in 
violent hysterics, and Frank standing staring at her, with a lower- 
ing angry face, biting his nails. 

“ I felt so indignant — without knowing plainly why, for I was ig- 
norant, of course, of what had passed at the interview — that I took 
Mr. Francis Clare by the shoulders and pushed him out of the room. 
X am careful to tell you how I acted toward him, and what led to 
\t; because I understand that he is excessively offended with me, 
and that he is likely to mention elsewhere what he calls my unlady- 
like violence toward him. If he should mention it to you, I am 
itnxious to acknowledge, of my own accord, that I forgot myself — 
Hot, I hope you will think, without some provocation. 

“ I pushed him into the hall, leaving Magdalen, for the moment, 
to Miss Garth’s care. Instead of going away, he sat down sulkily 
on one of the hall chairs. ‘May I ask the reason of this extraordi- 
nary violence ?’ he inquired, with an injured look. ‘ No,’ I said. 
‘You will be good enough to imagine the reason for yourseif, and 
to leave us immediately, if you please.’ He sat doggedly in the 
chair, biting his nails, and considering. ‘ What have I done to be 
treated in this unfeeling manner V he asked, after a while. ‘ I can 
enter into no discussion with you,’ I answered ; ‘ I can only request 
you to leave us. If you persist in waiting to see my sister again, I 
will go to the cottage myself, and appeal to your father.’ He got 
up in a great hurry at those words. ‘ I have been infamously used 
in this business,’ he said. ‘ All the hardships and the sacrifices have 
fallen to my share. I’m the only one among you who has any 
heart: all the rest are as hard as stones — Magdalen included. In 
one breath she says she loves me, and in another she tells me to go 
to China. What have I done to be treated with this heartless in- 
consistency ? I’m consistent myself— I only want to stop at home 
— and (what’s the consequence ?) you’re all against me !’ In that 
manner he grumbled his way down the steps, and so I saw the last 
of him. This was all that passed between us. If he gives you any 
other account of it, what he says will be false. He made no at- 
tempt to return. An hour afterward his father came alone to say 
good-bye. He saw Miss Garth and me, but not Magdalen ; and ho 


152 


NO NAME. 


told us He would take the necessary measures, with your assistance, 
for having his son properly looked after in London, and seen safely 
on board the vessel when the time came. It was a short visit, and 
a sad leave-taking. Even Mr. Clare was sorry, though he tried hard 
to hide it. 

“ We had barely two hours, after Mr. Clare had left us, before it 
would be time to go. I went back to Magdalen, and found her 
quieter and better, though terribly pale and exhausted, and oppress- 
ed, as I fancied, by thoughts which she could not prevail on herself 
to communicate. She would tell me nothing then — she has told me 
nothing since — of what passed between herself and Francis Clare. 
When I spoke of him angrily (feeling as I did that he had distress- 
ed and tortured her, when she ought to have had all the encourage- 
ment and comfort from him that man could give), she refused to 
hear me : she made the kindest allowances and the sweetest excuses 
for him, and laid all the blame of the dreadful state in which I had 
found her entirely on herself. Was I wrong in telling you that she 
had a noble nature ? And won’t you alter your opinion when you 
read these lines ? 

“We had no friends to come and bid us good-bye; and our few 
acquaintances were too far from us — perhaps too indifferent about 
us — to call. We employed the little leisure left, in going over the 
house together for the last time. We took leave of our old school- 
room, our bedrooms, the room where our mother died, the little 
study where our father used to settle his accounts and write his let- 
ters — feeling toward them, in our forlorn situation, as other girls 
might have felt at parting with old friends. From the house, in a 
gleam of fine weather, we went into the garden, and gathered our 
last nosegay ; with the purpose of drying the flowers when they be- 
gin to wither, and keeping them in remembrance of the happy days 
that are gone. When we had said good-bye to the garden, there 
was only half an hour left. We went together to the grave; we 
knelt down, side by side, in silence, and kissed the sacred ground. 
I thought my heart would have broken. August was the month of 
my mother’s birthday ; and, this time last year, my father and Mag- 
dalen and I were all consulting in secret what present we could 
make to surprise her with on the birthday morning. 

“ If you had seen how Magdalen suffered, you would never doubt 
her again. I had to take her from the last resting-place of our fa- 
ther and mother almost by force. Before we were out of the church- 
yard, she broke from me, and ran back. She dropped on her knees 
at the grave ; tore up from it passionately a handful of grass ; and 
s?id something to herself, at the same moment, which, though I fol- 
lowed her instantly, I did not get near enough to hear. She turned 
on me in such a frenzied manner, when I tried to raise her from the 


NO NAME. 


153 


ground — she looked at me with such a fearful wildness in her eyes 
— that I felt absolutely terrified at the sight of her. To my relief, 
the paroxysm left her as suddenly as it had come. She thrust away 
the tuft of grass into the bosom of her dress, and took my arm and 
hurried with me out of the church-yard. I asked her why she had 
gone back — I asked what those words were which she had spoken 
at the grave. 1 A promise to our dead father,’ she answered, with a 
momentary return of the wild look and the frenzied manner which 
had startled me already. I was afraid to agitate her by saying 
more ; I left all other questions to be asked at a fitter and a quieter 
time. You will understand from this how terribly she suffers, how 
wildly and strangely she acts under violent agitation ; and you will 
not interpret against her what she said or did when you saw her on 
Wednesday last. 

“We only returned to the house in time to hasten away from it to 
the train. Perhaps it was better for us so — better that w T e had only 
a moment left to look back, before the turn in the road hid the last 
of Combe-Raven from our view. There was not a soul we knew at 
the station; nobody to stare at us, nobody to wish us good-bye. 
The rain came on again as we took our seats in the train. What we 
felt at the sight of the railway — what horrible remembrances it 
forced on our minds of the calamity which has made us fatherless — 
I can not, and dare not, tell you. I have tried anxiously not to 
write this letter in a gloomy tone ; not to return all your kindness 
to us by distressing you with our grief. Perhaps I have dwelt too 
long already on the little story of our parting from home ? I can 
only say, in excuse, that my heart is full of it ; and what is not in 
my heart my pen won’t write. 

“ We have been so short a time in our new abode, that I have 
nothing more to tell you — except that Miss Garth’s sister has re- 
ceived us with the heartiest kindness. She considerately leaves us 
to ourselves, until we are fitter than we are now to think of our 
future plans, and to arrange as we best can for earning our own liv- 
ing. The house is so large, and the position of our rooms has been 
so thoughtfully chosen, that I should hardly know — except when I 
hear the laughing of the younger girls in the garden — that we were 
living in a school. 

“With kindest and best wishes from Miss Garth and my sister, 
believe me, dear Mr. Pendril, gratefully yours, 

“ Norah Vanstone.” 


« 


io4 


NO NAME. 


II. 

From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril. 

“Westmoreland House, Kensington, 
“September 23d, 1846. 

“ My dear Sir, — I write these lines in such misery of mind as nc 
words can describe. Magdalen has deserted us. At an early hour 
this morning she secretly left the house, and she has not been heard 
of since. 

“ I would come and speak to you personally ; but I dare not 
leave Norah. I must try to control myself ; I must try to write. 

a Nothing happened yesterday to prepare me or to prepare Norah 
for this last — I had almost said, this worst — of all our afflictions. 
The only alteration we either of us noticed in the unhappy girl was 
an alteration for the better when we parted for the night. She 
kissed me, which she has not done latterly ; and she burst out cry- 
ing when she embraced her sister next. We had so little suspicion 
of the truth, that we thought these signs of renewed tenderness and 
affection a promise of better things for the future. 

“ This morning, when her sister went into her room, it was emp- 
ty, and a note in her handwriting, addressed to Norah, was lying 
on the dressing-table. I can not prevail on Norah to part with the 
note ; I can only send you the inclosed copy of it. You will see 
that it affords no clue to the direction she has taken. 

“ Knowing the value of time, in this dreadful emergency, I ex- 
amined her room, and (with my sister’s help) questioned the serv- 
ants, immediately on the news of her absence reaching me. Her 
wardrobe was empty ; and all her boxes but one, which she has evi- 
dently taken away with her, are empty too. We are of opinion that 
she has privately turned her dresses and jewelry into money ; that 
she had the one trunk she took with her removed from the house 
yesterday ; and that she left us this morning on foot. The answers 
given by one of the servants are so unsatisfactory, that we believe 
the woman has been bribed to assist her; and has managed all 
those arrangements for her flight which she could not have safely 
undertaken by herself. 

“ Of the immediate object with which she has left us, I entertain 
no doubt. 

“ I have reasons (which I can tell you at a fitter time) for feeling 
assured that she has gone away with the intention of trying her 
fortune on the stage. She has in her possession the card of an actor 
by profession, who superintended an amateur theatrical performance 
a^ Clifton, in which she took part ; and to him she has gone to help 
her. I saw the card at the time, and I know the actor’s name to be 
Huxtable. The address I can not call to mind quite so correctly; 


NO NAME. 


155 


but I am almost sure it was at some theatrical place in Bow Street, 
Covent Garden. Let me entreat you not to lose a moment in send- 
ing to make the necessary inquiries ; the first trace of her will, I 
firmly believe, be found at that address. 

“ If we had nothing worse to dread than her attempting to go on 
the stage, I should not feel the distress and dismay which now over- 
power me. Hundreds of other girls have acted as recklessly as she 
has acted, and have not ended ill after all. But my fears for Mag- 
dalen do not begin and end with the risk she is running at present. 

“ There has been something weighing on her mind ever since we 
left Combe-Raven — weighing far more heavily for the last six weeks 
than at first. Until the period when Francis Clare left England, I 
am persuaded she was secretly sustained by the hope that he would 
contrive to see her again. From the day when she knew that the 
measures you had taken for preventing this had succeeded ; from 
the day when she was assured that the ship had really taken him 
away, nothing has roused, nothing has interested her. She has 
given herself up, more and more hopelessly, to her own brooding 
thoughts ; thoughts which I believe first entered her mind on the 
day when the utter ruin of the prospects on which her marriage de- 
pended was made known to her. She has formed some desperate 
project of contesting the possession of her father’s fortune with 
Michael Yanstone ; and the stage career which she has gone away 
to try is nothing more than a means of freeing herself from all home 
dependence, and of enabling her to run what mad risks she pleases, 
in perfect security from all home control. What it costs me to 
write of her in these terms, I must leave you to imagine. The time 
has gone by when any consideration of distress to my own feelings 
can weigh with me. Whatever I can say which will open your eyes 
to the real danger, and strengthen your conviction of the instant 
necessity of averting it, I say in despite of myself, without hesitation 
and without reserve. 

u One word more, and I have done. 

“ The last time you were so good as to come to this house, do you 
remember how Magdalen embarrassed and distressed us by question- 
ing you about her right to bear her father’s name ? Do you remem- 
ber her persisting in her inquiries, until she had forced you to ac- 
knowledge that, legally speaking, she and her sister had No Name ? 
I venture to remind you of this, because you have the affairs of hun- 
dreds of clients to think of, and you might well have forgotten the 
circumstance. Whatever natural reluctance she might otherwise 
have had to deceiving us, and degrading herself, by the use of an 
assumed name, that conversation with you is certain to have re- 
moved. We must discover her by personal description — we can 
trace her in no other way. 


156 


NO NAME. 


“ I can think of nothing more to guide your decision in our de- 
plorable emergency. For God’s sake, let no expense and no efforts 
be spared. My letter ought to reach you by ten o’clock this morn- 
ing, at the latest. Let me have one line in answer, to say you will 
act instantly for the best. My only hope of quieting Norah is to 
show her a word of encouragement from your pen. Believe me. 
dear sir, yours sincerely and obliged, Harriet Garth.” 

III. 

From Magdalen to Norah {inclosed in the 'preceding Letter ). 

“ My Darling, — Try to forgive me. I have struggled against 
myself till I am worn out in the effort. I am the wretchedest of 
living creatures. Our quiet life here maddens me ; I can bear it no 
longer ; I must go. If you knew what my thoughts are ; if you 
knew how hard I have fought against them, and how horribly they 
have gone on haunting me in the lonely quiet of this house, you 
would pity and forgive me. Oh, my love, don’t feel hurt at my not 
opening my heart to you as I ought ! I dare not open it. I dare 
not show myself to you as I really am. 

“ Pray don’t send and seek after me ; I will write and relieve all 
your anxieties. You know, Norah, w r e must get our living for our- 
selves ; I have only gone to get mine in the manner which is fittest 
for me. Whether I succeed, or whether I fail, I can do myself no 
harm either way. I have no position to lose, and no name to de- 
grade. Don’t doubt I love you — don’t let Miss Garth doubt my 
gratitude. I go away miserable at leaving you ; but I must go. If 
I had loved you less dearly, I might have had the courage to say 
this in your presence — but how could I trust myself to resist your 
persuasions, and to bear the sight of your distress ? Farewell, my 
darling! Take a thousand kisses from me, my own best, dearest 
love, till we meet again. Magdalen.” 


IV. 

From Sergeant Buhner {of the Detective Police ) to Mr. Pendril. 

“Scotland Yard, September 29th, 1846. 

“ Sir, — Your clerk informs me that the parties interested in our 
inquiry after the missing young lady are anxious for news of the 
same. I went to your office to speak to you about the matter to- 
day. Not having found you, and not being able to return and try 
again to-morrow, I write these lines to save delay, and to tell you 
how we stand thus far. 

“ I am sorry to say, no advance has been made since my former 
report. The trace of the young lady w T hich we found nearly a week 


NO NAME. 


157 


since, still remains the last trace discovered of her. This case seems 
a mighty simple one looked at from a distance. Looked at close, 
it alters very considerably for the worse, and becomes, to speak the 
plain truth — a Poser. 

“ This is how we now stand : 

“ We have traced the young lady to the theatrical agent’s in Bow 
Street. We know that at an early hour on the morning of the 
twenty-third the agent was called down stairs, while he was dress 
ing, to speak to a young lady in a cab at the door. We know that* 
on her production of Mr. Huxtable’s card, he wrote on it Mr. Hux^ 
table’s address in the country, and heard her order the cabman to 
drive to the Great Northern terminus. We believe she left by tho 
nine o’clock train. We followed her by the twelve o’clock train. 
We have ascertained that she called at half-past two at Mr. Huxta- 
ble’s lodgings ; that she found he was away, and not expected back 
till eight in the evening ; that she left word she would call again at 
eight ; and 'that she never returned. Mr. Huxtable’s statement is — 
he and the young lady have never set eyes on each other. The first 
consideration which follows, is this : Are we to believe Mr. Huxta- 
ble ? I have carefully inquired into his character ; I know as much, 
or more, about him than he knows about himself ; and my opinion 
is, that we are to believe him. To the best of my knowledge, he is 
a perfectly honest man. 

“Here, then, is the hitch in the case. The young lady sets out 
with a certain object before her. Instead of going on to the ac- 
complishment of that object, she stops short of it. Why has she 
stopped ? and where ? Those are, unfortunately, just the questions 
which we can’t answer yet. 

“ My own opinion of the matter is, briefly, as follows : I don’t 
think she has met with any serious accident. Serious accidents, in 
nine cases out of ten, discover themselves. My own notion is, that 
she has fallen into the hands of some person or persons interested 
in hiding her away, and sharp enough to know how to set about it. 
Whether she is in their charge, with or without her own consent, is 
more than I can undertake to say at present. I don’t wish to raise 
false hopes or false fears ; I wish to stop short at the opinion I have 
given already. 

“ In regard to the future, I may tell you that I have left one of 
my men in daily communication wfith the authorities. I have also 
taken care to have the handbills offering a reward for the discovery 
of her widely circulated. Lastly, I have completed the necessary 
arrangements for seeing the play-bills of all country theatres, and for 
having the dramatic companies well looked after. Some years since, 
this would have cost a serious expenditure of time and money. 
Luckily for our purpose, the country theatres are in a bad way. 


158 


NO NAME. 


Excepting the large cities, hardly one of them is open, and we can 
keep our eye on them, with little expense and less difficulty. 

“ These are the steps which I think it needful to take at present. 
If you are of another opinion, you have only to give me your direc- 
tions, and I will carefully attend to the same. I don’t by any means 
despair of our finding the young lady and bringing her back to her 
friends safe and well. Please to tell them so ; and allow me to sub- 
scribe myself, yours respectfully, Abraham Bulmer.” 


V. 

Anonymous Letter addressed to Mr. Pendril. 

u Sir, — A w T ord to the wise. The friends of a certain young lady 
are wasting time and money to no purpose. Your confidential 
clerk and your detective policeman are looking for a needle in a 
bottle of hay. This is the ninth of October, and they have not 
found her yet : they will as soon find the North-west Passage. Call 
your dogs off; and you may hear of the young lady’s safety under 
her own hand. The longer you look for her, the longer she will 
remain, what she is now — lost.” 


[The preceding letter is thus indorsed, in Mr. Pendril’s hand- 
writing : “ No apparent means of tracing the inclosed to its source. 
Post-mark, ‘ Charing Cross.’ Stationer’s stamp cut off the inside 
of the envelope. Handwriting, probably a man’s, in disguise. 
Writer, whoever he is, correctly informed. No further trace of the 
younger Miss Yanstone discovered yet.”] 


NO NAME. 


159 


THE SECOND SCENE. 

SKELDERGATE, YORK. 

CHAPTER I. 

In that part of the city of York which is situated on the western 
bank of the Ouse there is a narrow street, called Skeldergate, run- 
ning nearly north and south, parallel with the course of the river. 
The postern by which Skeldergate was formerly approached no 
longer exists ; and the few old houses left in the street are dis- 
guised in melancholy modern costume of whitewash and cement. 
Shops of the smaller and poorer order, intermixed here and there 
with dingy warehouses and joyless private residences of red brick, 
compose the present aspect of Skeldergate. On the river-side the 
houses are separated at intervals by lanes running down to the 
water, and disclosing lonely little plots of open ground, with the 
masts of sailing-barges rising beyond. At its southward extremity 
the street ceases on a sudden, and the broad flow of the Ouse, the 
trees, the meadows, the public-walk on one bank and the towing- 
path on the other, open to view. 

Here, where the street ends, and on the side of it farthest from 
the river, a narrow little lane leads up to the paved footway sur- 
mounting the ancient Walls of York. The one small row of build- 
ings, which is all that the lane possesses, is composed of cheap 
lodging-houses, with an opposite view, at the distance of a few feet, 
of a portion of the massive city wall. This place is called Rosemary 
Lane. Very little light enters it; very few people live in it; the 
floating population of Skeldergate passes it by ; and visitors to the 
Walk on the Walls, who use it as the way up or the way down, get 
out of the dreary little passage as fast as they can. 

The door of one of the houses in this lost corner of York opened 
softly on the evening of the twenty-third of September, eighteen 
hundred and forty-six ; and a solitary individual of the male sex 
sauntered into Skeldergate from the seclusion of Rosemary Lane. 

Turning northward, this person directed his steps toward the 
bridge over the Ouse and the busy centre of the city. He bore the 
external appearance of respectable poverty ; he carried a gingham 
umbrella, preserved in an oilskin case ; he picked his steps, with 
the neatest avoidance of all dirty places on the pavement ; and he 


160 


NO NAME. 


surveyed the scene around him with eyes of two different colors— 
a bilious brown eye on the look-out for employment, and a bilious 
green eye in a similar predicament. In plainer terms, the stranger 
from Rosemary Lane was no other than — Captain Wragge. 

Outwardly speaking, the captain had not altered for the better 
since the memorable spring day when he had presented himself to 
Miss Garth at the lodge-gate at Combe-Raven. The railway mania 
of that famous year had attacked even the wary Wragge; had with- 
drawn him from his customary pursuits ; and had left him prostrate 
in the end, like many a better man. He had lost his clerical ap- 
pearance — he had faded with the autumn leaves. His crape hat- 
band had put itself in brown mourning for its own bereavement of 
black. His dingy white collar and cravat had died the death of 
old linen, and had gone to their long home at the paper-maker’s, to 
live again one day in quires at a stationer’s shop. A gray shooting- 
jacket in the last stage of woolen atrophy replaced the black frock- 
coat of former times, and, like a faithful servant, kept the dark 
secret of its master’s linen from the eyes of a prying world. From 
top to toe every square inch of the captain’s clothing was altered 
for the worse ; but the man himself remained unchanged — superior 
to all forms of moral mildew, impervious to the action of social rust. 
He was as courteous, as persuasive, as blandly dignified as ever. 
He carried his head as high without a shirt-collar as ever he had 
carried it with one. The threadbare black handkerchief round his 
neck was perfectly tied ; his rotten old shoes were neatly blacked ; 
he might have compared chins, in the matter of smooth shaving, with 
the highest church dignitary in York. Time, change, and poverty 
had all attacked the captain together, and had all failed alike to 
get him down on the ground. He paced the streets of York, a man 
superior to clothes and circumstances — his vagabond varnish as 
bright on him as ever. 

Arrived at the bridge, Captain Wragge stopped and looked idly 
over the parapet at the barges in the river. It was plainly evident 
that he had no particular destination to reach, and nothing what- 
ever to do. While he was still loitering, the clock of York Minster 
chimed the half-hour past five. Cabs rattled by him over the bridge 
on their way to meet the train from London, at twenty minutes to 
six. After a moment’s hesitation, the captain sauntered after the 
cabs. When it is one of a man’s regular habits to live upon his fel- 
low-creatures, that man is always more or less fond of haunting 
large railway stations. Captain Wragge gleaned the human field, 
and on that unoccupied afternoon the York terminus was as likely 
a corner to look about in as any other. 

He reached the platform a few minutes after the train had ar- 
rived. That entire incapability of devising administrative measures 


NO NAME. 


161 


for the management of large crowds, which is one of the character- 
istics of Englishmen in authority, is nowhere more strikingly ex- 
emplified than at York. Three different lines of railway assemble 
three passenger mobs, from morning to night, under one roof ; and 
leave them to raise a traveler’s riot, with all the assistance which 
the bewildered servants of the company can render to increase the 
confusion. The customary disturbance was rising to its climax as 
Captain Wragge approached the platform. Dozens of different peo- 
ple were trying to attain dozens of different objects, in dozens of 
different directions, all starting from the same common point, and 
all equally deprived of the means of information. A sudden parting 
of the crowd, near the second-class carriages, attracted the captain’s 
curiosity. He pushed his way in ; and found a decently-dressed 
man — assisted by a porter and a policeman — attempting to pick up 
some printed bills scattered from a paper parcel, which his frenzied 
fellow-passengers had knocked out of his hand. 

Offering his assistance in this emergency, with the polite alacrity 
which marked his character, Captain Wragge observed the three 
startling words, “ Fifty Pounds Reward,” printed in capital letters 
on the bills which he assisted in recovering ; and instantly secreted 
one of them, to be more closely examined at the first convenient op- 
portunity. As he crumpled up the bill in the palm of his hand, his 
party-colored eyes fixed with hungry interest on the proprietor of 
the unlucky parcel. When a man happens not to be possessed of 
fifty pence in his own pocket, if his heart is in the right place, it 
bounds; if his mouth is properly constituted, it waters, at the sight 
of another man who carries about with him a printed offer of fifty 
pounds sterling, addressed to his fellow-creatures. 

The unfortunate traveler wrapped up his parcel as he best might, 
and made his way off the platform, after addressing an inquiry to 
the first official victim of the day’s passenger-traffic, who was suffi- 
ciently in possession of his senses to listen to it. Leaving the sta- 
tion for the river-side, which was close at hand, the stranger entered 
the ferry-boat at the North Street Postern. The captain, who had 
carefully dogged his steps thus far, entered the boat also ; and em- 
ployed the short interval of transit to the opposite bank, in a peru- 
sal of the handbill which he had kept for his own private enlight- 
enment. With his back carefully turned on the traveler, Captain 
Wragge now possessed his mind of the following lines: 

“fifty pounds reward. 

“ Left her home, in London, early on the morning of September 
23d, 1846, A Young Lady. Age— eighteen. Dress — deep mourn- 
ing. Personal appearance — hair of a very light brown; eyebrows 
and eyelashes darker ; eyes light gray ; complexion strikingly pale ; 


162 


NO NAME. 


lower part of her face large and full; tall upright figure; walks 
with remarkable grace and ease ; speaks with openness and resolu 
tion ; has the manners and habits of a refined, cultivated lady. Per- 
sonal marks — two little moles, close together, on the left side of the 
neck. Mark on the under-clothing — ‘ Magdalen Vanstone.’ Is sup- 
posed to have joined, or attempted to join, under an assumed name, 
a theatrical company now performing at York. Had, when she left 
London, one black box, and no other luggage. Whoever will give 
such information as will restore her to her friends shall receive the 
above Reward. Apply at the office of Mr. Harkness, solicitor, Coney 
Street, York. Or to Messrs. Wyatt, Pendril, and Gwilt, Serle Street, 
Lincoln’s Inn, London.” 

Accustomed as Captain Wragge was to keep the completest pos- 
session of himself in all human emergencies, his own profound as- 
tonishment, when the course of his reading brought him to the 
mark on the linen of the missing young lady, betrayed him into an 
exclamation of surprise which even startled the ferryman. The 
traveler was less observant ; his whole attention was fixed on the 
opposite bank of the river, and he left the boat hastily the moment 
it touched the landing-place. Captain Wragge recovered himself, 
pocketed the handbill, and followed his leader for the second time. 

The stranger directed his steps to the nearest street which ran 
down to the river, compared a note in his pocket-book with the 
numbers of the houses on the left-hand side, stopped at one of 
them, and rang the bell. The captain went on to the next house ; 
affected to ring the bell, in his turn ; and stood with his back to 
the traveler — in appearance, waiting to be let in ; in reality, listen 
ing with all his might for any scraps of dialogue which might reach 
his ears on the opening of the door behind him. 

The door was answered with all due alacrity, and a sufficiently 
instructive interchange of question and answer on the threshold re- 
warded the dexterity of Captain Wragge. 

“ Does Mr. Huxtable live here ?” asked the traveler. 

“ Yes, sir,” was the answer, in a woman’s voice. 

“Is he at home ?” 

“ Not at home now, sir ; but he will be in again at eight to-night.” 

“I think a young lady called here early in the day, did she not?” 

“ Yes ; a young lady came this afternoon.” 

“Exactly; I come on the same business. Did she see Mr. Hux- 
table ?” 

“ No, sir ; he has been away all day. The young lady told me 
she would come back at eight o’clock.” 

“Just so. I will call and see Mr. Huxtable at the same time.” 

“ Any name, sir ?” 


NO NAME. 


163 


“ No ; say a gentleman called on theatrical business — that will be 
enough. Wait one minute, if you please. I am a stranger in York ; 
will you kindly tell me which is the way to Coney Street ?” 

The woman gave the required information, the door closed, and 
the stranger hastened away in the direction of Coney Street. 

On this occasion Captain Wragge made no attempt to follow him. 
The handbill revealed plainly enough that the man’s next object 
was to complete the necessary arrangements with the local solicitor 
on the subject of the promised reward. 

Having seen and heard enough for his immediate purpose, the 
•captain retraced his steps down the street, turned to the right, and 
entered on the Esplanade, which, in that quarter of the city, borders 
the river -side between the swimming-baths and Lendal Tower. 
‘“This is a family matter,” said Captain Wragge to himself, persist- 
ing, from sheer force of habit, in the old assertion of his relationship 
tto Magdalen’s mother; “ I must consider it in all its bearings.” He 
Itucked the umbrella under his arm, crossed his hands behind him, 
and lowered himself gently into the abyss of his own reflections. 
The order and propriety observable in the captain’s shabby gar- 
ments accurately typified the order and propriety which distin- 
guished the operations of the captain’s mind. It was his habit al- 
ways to see his way before him through a neat succession of alter- 
natives — and so he saw it now. 

Three courses were open to him in connection with the remark- 
able discovery which he had just made. The first course was to 
do nothing in the matter at all. Inadmissible, on family grounds : 
equally inadmissible on pecuniary grounds • rejected accordingly. 
The second course was to deserve the gratitude of the young lady’s 
friends, rated at fifty pounds. The third course was by a timely 
warning, to deserve the gratitude of the young lady herself, rated 
— at an unknown figure. Between these two last alternatives the 
wary Wragge hesitated ; not from doubt of Magdalen’s pecuniary 
resources — for he was totally ignorant of the circumstances which 
had deprived the sisters of their inheritance — but from doubt wheth- 
er an obstacle in the shape of an undiscovered gentleman might not 
be privately connected with her disappearance from home. After 
mature reflection, he determined to pause, and be guided by cir- 
cumstances. In the mean time, the first consideration was to be be- 
forehand with the messenger from London, and to lay hands secure- 
ly on the young lady herself. 

“ I feel for this misguided girl,” mused the captain, solemnly 
strutting backward and forward by the lonely river-side. “I al- 
ways have looked upon her — I always shall look upon her — in the 
light of a niece.” 

Where was the adopted relative at that moment ? In other words, 


164 


NO NAME. 


how was a young lady in Magdalen’s critical position likely to 
while away the hours until Mr. Huxtable’s return ? If there was an 
obstructive gentleman in the background, it would be mere waste 
of time to pursue the question. But if the inference which the 
handbill suggested was correct — if she was really alone at that mo- 
ment in the city of York — where was she likely to be ? 

Not in the crowded thoroughfares, to begin with. Not viewing 
the objects of interest in the Minster, for it was now past the hour 
at which the cathedral could be seen. Was she in the waiting- 
room at the railway? She would hardly run that risk. Was she 
in one of the hotels ? Doubtlul, considering that she was entirely 
by herself. In a pastry-cook’s shop ? Far more likely. Driving 
about in a cab ? Possible, certainly ; but no more. Loitering away 
the time in some quiet locality, out-of-doors ? Likely enough, again, 
on that fine autumn evening. The captain paused, weighed the 
relative claims on his attention of the quiet locality and the pastry- 
cook’s shop ; and decided for the first of the two. There was time 
enough to find her at the pastry-cook’s, to inquire after her at the 
principal hotels, or, finally, to intercept her in Mr. Huxtable’s imme- 
diate neighborhood, from seven to eight. While the light lasted, 
the wise course was to use it in looking for her out-of-doors. 
Where ? The Esplanade was a quiet locality ; but she was not 
there — not on the lonely road beyond, which ran back by the Ab- 
bey Wall. Where next ? The captain stopped, looked across the 
river, brightened under the influence of a new idea, and suddenly 
hastened back to the ferry. 

“The Walk on the Walls,” thought this judicious man, with a 
twinkle of his party-colored eyes. “ The quietest place in York ; 
and the place that every stranger goes to see.” 

In ten minutes more Captain Wragge was exploring the new field 
of search. He mounted to the walls (which inclose the whole west- 
ern portion of the city) by the North Street Postern, from which 
the walk winds round, until it ends again at its southernly extremi- 
ty, in the narrow passage of Rosemary Lane. It was then twenty 
minutes to seven. The sun had set more than half an hour since ; 
the red light lay broad and low in the cloudless western heaven ; 
all visible objects w T ere softening in the tender twilight, but were 
not darkening yet. The first few lamps lit in the street below 
looked like faint little specks of yellow light, as the captain started 
on his walk through one of the most striking scenes which England 
can show. 

On his right hand, as he set forth, stretched the open country be- 
yond the walls — the rich green meadows, the boundary-trees divid- 
ing them, the broad windings of the river in the distance, the scat- 
tered buildings nearer to view ; all wrapped in the evening stillness, 


NO NAME. 


165 


all made beautiful by the evening peace. On his left hand, the ma- 
jestic west front of York Minster soared over the city, and caught 
the last brightest light of heaven on the summits of its lofty towers. 
Had this noble prospect tempted the lost girl to linger and look at 
it ? No ; thus far, not a sign of her. The captain looked round him 
attentively, and walked on. 

He reached the spot where the iron course of the railroad strikes 
its way through arches in the* old wall. He paused at this place — 
where the central activity of a great railway enterprise beats, with 
all the pulses of its loud-clanging life, side by side with the dead 
majesty of the past, deep under the old historic stones which tell of 
fortified York and the sieges of two centuries since — he stood on 
this spot, and searched for her again, and searched in vain. Others 
were looking idly down at the desolate activity on the wilderness 
of the iron rails; but she was not among them. The captain 
glanced doubtfully at the darkening sky, and walked on. 

He stopped again where the postern of Micklegate still stands, 
and still strengthens the city wall as of old. Here the paved walk 
descends a few steps, passes through the dark stone guard-room of 
the ancient gate, ascends again, and continues its course southward 
until the walls reach the river once more. He paused, and peered 
anxiously into the dim inner corners of the old guard-room. Was 
she waiting there for the darkness to come, and hide her from pry- 
ing eyes ? No : a solitary workman loitered through the stone 
chamber ; but no other living creature stirred in the place. The 
captain mounted the steps which led out from the postern, and 
walked on. 

He advanced some fifty or sixty yards along the paved footway; 
the outlying suburbs of York on one side of him, a rope-walk and 
some patches of kitchen garden occupying a vacant strip of ground 
on the other. He advanced with eager eyes and quickened step; 
for he saw before him the lonely figure of a woman, standing by the 
parapet of the wall, with her face set toward the westward view. 
He approached cautiously, to make sure of her before she turned 
and observed him. There was no mistaking that tall dark figure, 
as it rested against the parapet with a listless grace. There she 
stood, in her long black cloak and gown, the last dim light of even- 
ing falling tenderly on her pale, resolute young face. There she stood 
— not three months since the spoiled darling of her parents; the 
priceless treasure of the household, never left unprotected, never 
trusted alone — there she stood in the lovely dawn of her woman- 
hood, a castaway in a strange city, wrecked on the world ! 

Vagabond as he was, the first sight of her staggered even the 
dauntless assurance of Captain Wragge. As she slowly turned her 
face and looked at him, he raised his hat, with the nearest approach 


166 


NO NAME. 


to respect which a long life of unblushing audacity had left him 
capable of making. 

“ I think I have the honor of addressing the younger Miss Van- 
stone ?” he began. “ Deeply gratified, I am sure — for more reasons 
than one.” 

She looked at him with a cold surprise. No recollection of the 
day when he had followed her sister and herself on their way home 
with Miss Garth rose in her memory, while he now confronted her, 
with his altered manner and his altered dress. 

“ You are mistaken,” she said, quietly. “ You are a perfect stran- 
ger to me.” 

“ Pardon me,” replied the captain ; “I ama species of relation. 
I had the pleasure of seeing you in the spring of the present year. 
I presented myself on that memorable occasion to an honored pre- 
ceptress in your late father’s family. Permit me, under equally 
agreeable circumstances, to present myself to you. My name is 
Wragge.” 

By this time he had recovered complete possession of his own 
impudence ; his party-colored eyes twinkled cheerfully, and he ac- 
companied his modest announcement of himself with a dancing- 
master’s bow. 

Magdalen frowned, and drew back a step. The captain was not 
a man to be daunted by a cold reception. He tucked his umbrella 
under his arm, and jocosely spelled his name for her further enlight- 
enment. “ w, r, a, double g, e — Wragge,” said the captain, ticking 
off the letters persuasively on his fingers. 

“ I remember your name,” said Magdalen. “ Excuse me for leav- 
ing you abruptly. I have an engagement.” 

She tried to pass him, and walk on northward toward the rail- 
way. He instantly met the attempt by raising both hands, and dis- 
playing a pair of darned black gloves outspread in polite protest. 

“ Not that way,” he said ; “ not that way, Miss Vanstone, I beg 
and entreat !” 

“ Why not ?” she asked, haughtily. 

“Because,” answered the captain, “that is the way wlach leads 
to Mr. Huxtable’s.” 

In the ungovernable astonishment of hearing his reply, she sud- 
denly bent forward, and for the first time looked him close in the 
face. He sustained her suspicious scrutiny, with every appearance; 
of feeling highly gratified by it. “ h, u, x — Hux,” said the captain, 
playfully turning to the old joke ; “ t, a — ta, Huxta ; b, l, e — ble ; ; 
Huxtable.” 

“ What do you know about Mr. Huxtable ?” she asked. “ What 
do you mean by mentioning him to me ?” 

The captain’s curly lip took a new twist upward, He immediate' 



HE TUCKET) TITS UMBRELLA UNDER HIS ARM, AND JOCOSELY SPELLED HfS 
NAME FOR HER FURTHER ENLIGHTENMENT. 





NO NAME. 


169 


ly replied, to the best practical purpose, by producing the handbill 
from his pocket. 

“There is just light enough left,” he said, “for young (and love- 
ly) eyes to read by. Before I enter upon the personal statement 
which your flattering inquiry claims from me, pray bestow a mo- 
ment’s attention on this Document.” 

She took the handbill from him. By the last gleam of twilight, 
she read the lines which set a price on her recovery — which pub- 
lished the description of her in pitiless print, like the description of 
a strayed dog. No tender consideration had prepared her for the 
shock, no kind word softened it to her when it came. The vaga- 
bond, whose cunning eyes watched her eagerly while she read, knew 
no more that the handbill which he had stolen had only been pre- 
pared in anticipation of the worst, and was only to be publicly used 
in the event of all more considerable means of tracing her being 
tried in vain — than she knew it. The bill dropped from her hand ; 
her face flushed deeply. She turned away from Captain Wragge, as 
if all idea of his existence had passed out of her mind. 

“ Oh, Norah, Norah !” she said to herself, sorrowfully. “After 
the letter I wrote you — after the hard struggle I had to go away! 
Oh, Norah, Norah !” 

“ How is Norah ?” inquired the captain, with the utmost polite- 
ness. 

She turned upon him with an angry brightness in her large gray 
eyes. “ Is this thing shown publicly ?” she asked, stamping her 
foot on it. “ Is the mark on my neck described all over York ?” 

“Pray compose yourself,” pleaded the persuasive Wragge. “At 
present I have every reason to believe that you have just perused 
the only copy in circulation. Allow me to pick it up.” 

Before he could touch the bill, she snatched it from the pave- 
ment, tore it into fragments, and threw them over the wall. 

“ Bravo !” cried the captain. “You remind me of your poor dear 
mother. The family spirit, Miss Yanstone. We all inherit our hot 
blood from my maternal grandfather.” 

“ How did you come by it ?” she asked, suddenly. 

“ My dear creature, I have just told you,” remonstrated the cap- 
tain. “We all come by it from my maternal grandfather.” 

“ How did you come by that handbill ?” she repeated, passion- 
ately. 

“ I beg ten thousand pardons ! My head was running on the 
family spirit. — How did I come by it ? Briefly thus.” Here Cap- 
tain Wragge entered on his personal statement; taking his custom- 
ary vocal exercise through the longest words of the English lan- 
guage, with the highest elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare 
occasion, nothing to gain by concealment, he departed from his 


170 


NO NAME. 


ordinary habits, and, with the utmost amazement at the novelty of 
his own situation, permitted himself to tell the unmitigated truth. 

The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled 
Captain Wragge’s anticipations in relating it. She was not startled ; 
she was not irritated ; she showed no disposition to cast herself on 
his mercy, and to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the 
face; and all she said, when he had neatly rounded his last sen- 
tence, was — “ Go on.” 

“ Go on ?” repeated the captain. “ Shocked to disappoint you, 
I am sure ; but the fact is, I have done.” 

“ No, you have not,” she rejoined ; “ you have left out the end of 
your story. The *snd of it is, you came here to look for me; and 
you mean to earn the fifty pounds reward.” 

Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge, that 
for the moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward 
truths of all sorts far too often to be permanently disconcerted by 
them. Before Magdalen could pursue her advantage, the vagabond 
had recovered his balance : Wragge was himself again. 

“ Smart,” said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming 
with his umbrella on the pavement. “ Some men might take it se- 
riously. I’m not easily offended. Try again.” 

Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute 
perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience 
among people who possessed a common sense of honor, and a com- 
mon responsibility of social position. She had hitherto seen noth- 
ing but the successful human product from the great manufactory 
of Civilization. Here was one of the failures, and, with all her 
quickness, she was puzzled how to deal with it. 

“ Pardon me for returning to the subject,” pursued the captain. 
“ It has just occurred to my mind that you might actually have 
spoken in earnest. My poor child ! how can I earn the fifty pounds 
before the reward is offered to me ? Those handbills may not be 
publicly posted for a week to come. Precious as you are to all your 
relatives (myself included), take my word for it, the lawyers who 
are managing this case will not pay fifty pounds for you if they can 
possibly help it. Are you still persuaded that my needy pockets 
are gaping for the money ? Very good. Button them up in spite 
of me, with your own fair fingers. There is a train to London at 
nine forty-five to-night. Submit yourself to your friend’s wishes, 
and go back by it.” 

“ Never !” said Magdalen, firing at the bare suggestion, exactly 
as the captain had intended she should. “If my mind had not 
been made up before, that vile handbill would have decided me. I 
forgive Norah,” she added, turning away, and speaking to herself 
V but not Mr. Pendril, and not Miss Garth.” 


NO NAME. 


171 


“Quite right!” observed Captain Wragge. “The family spirit. 
I should have done the same myself at your age. It runs in the 
blood. Hark ! there goes the clock again — half-past seven. Miss 
Vanstone, pardon this seasonable abruptness ! If you are to carry 
out your resolution — if you are to be your own mistress much long- 
er, you must take a course of some kind before eight o’clock. You 
are young, you are inexperienced, you are in imminent danger. 
Here is a position of emergency on one side — and here am I, on the 
-other, with an uncle’s interest in you, full of advice. T^p me.” 

“ Suppose I choose to depend on nobody, and to act for myself ?” 
said Magdalen. “ What then ?” 

“Then,” replied the captain, “you will walk straight into one of 
the four traps which are set to catch you in the ancient and inter- 
esting city of York. Trap the first, at Mr. Huxtable’s house ; trap 
the second, at all the hotels ; trap the third, at the railway station ; 
trap the fourth, at the theatre. That man with the handbills has 
had an hour at his disposal. If he has not set those four traps 
(with the assistance of the local solicitor) by this time, he is not 
the competent lawyer’s clerk I take him for. Come, come, my dear 
girl ! if there is somebody else in the background, whose advice 
you prefer to mine — ” 

“ You see that I am alone,” she interposed, proudly. “ If you 
knew me better, you would know that I depend on nobody but my- 
self.” 

Those words decided the only doubt which now remained in the 
captain’s mind — the doubt whether the course was clear before him. 
The motive of her flight from home was evidently what the hand- 
bills assumed it to be — a reckless fancy for going on the stage. 
“ One of two things,” thought Wragge to himself, in his logical way. 
“ She’s worth more than fifty pounds to me in her present situation, 
or she isn’t. If she is, her friends may whistle for her. If she isn’t, 
I have only to keep her till the bills are posted.” Fortified by this 
simple plan of action, the captain returned to the charge, and polite- 
ly placed Magdalen between the two inevitable alternatives of trust- 
ing herself to him, on the one hand, or of returning to her friends, 
on the other. 

“ I respect independence of character wherever I find it,” he said, 
with an air of virtuous severity. “In a young and lovely relative, I 
more than respect — I admire it. But (excuse the bold assertion), to 
walk on a way of your own, you must first have a way to walk on. 
Under existing circumstances, where is your way ? Mr. Huxtable is 
out of the question, to begin with.” 

“ Out of the question for to-night,” said Magdalen ; “ but what 
hinders me from writing to Mr. Huxtable, and making my own pri- 
vate arrangements with him for to-morrow ?” 


172 


NO NAME. 


“ Granted with all my heart — a hit, a palpable hit. Now for my 
turn. To get to to-morrow (excuse the bold assertion, once more), 
you must first pass through to-night. Where are you to sleep ?” 

“Are there no hotels in York ?” 

“Excellent hotels for large families; excellent hotels for single 
gentlemen. The very worst hotels in the world for handsome young 
ladies who present themselves alone at the door without male escort, 
without a maid in attendance, and without a single article of lug- 
gage. Dark as it is, I think I could see a lady’s box, if there was 
any thing of the sort in our immediate neighborhood.” 

“ My box is at the cloak-room. What is to prevent my sending 
the ticket for it ?” 

“ Nothing — if you want to communicate your address by means 
of your box — nothing whatever. Think ; pray think ! Do you re- 
ally suppose that the people who are looking for you are such fools 
as not to have an eye on the cloak-room ? Do you think they are 
such fools — when they find you don’t come to Mr. Huxtable’s at 
eight to-night — as not to inquire at all the hotels ? Do you think a 
young lady of your striking appearance (even if they consented to 
receive you) could take up her abode at an inn without becoming 
the subject of universal curiosity and remark ? Here is night com- 
ing on as fast as it can. Don’t let me bore you ; only let me ask 
once more — Where are you to sleep ?” 

There was no answer to that question : in Magdalen’s position, 
there was literally no answer to it on her side. She was silent. 

“ Where are you to sleep ?” repeated the captain. “ The reply is 
obvious — under my roof. Mrs. Wragge will be charmed to see you. 
Look upon her as your aunt ; pray look upon her as your aunt. The 
landlady is a widow, the house is close by, there are no other lodg- 
ers, and there is a bedroom to let. Can any thing be more satisfac- 
tory, under all the circumstances ? Pray observe, I say nothing about 
to-morrow — I leave to-morrow to you, and confine myself exclusive- 
ly to the night. I may, or may not, command theatrical facilities, 
which I am in a position to offer you. Sympathy and admiration 
may, or may not, be strong within me, when I contemplate the dash 
and independence of your character. Hosts of examples of bright 
stars of the British drama, who have begun their apprenticeship to 
phe stage as you are beginning yours, may, or may not, crowd on my 
memory. These are topics for the future. For the present, I con- 
fine myself within my strict range of duty. We are within five min- 
utes’ walk of my present address. Allow me to offer you my arm. 
No ? You hesitate ? You distrust me ? Good heavens ! is it pos- 
sible you can have heard any thing to my disadvantage ?” 

“ Quite possible,” said Magdalen, without a moment’s flinching 
*rom the answer. 


NO NAME. 


173 


“ May I inquire the particulars ?” asked the captain, with the po- 
litest composure. u Don’t spare my feelings ; oblige me by speaking 
out. In the plainest terms, now, what have you heard ?” 

She answered him with a woman’s desperate disregard of conse- 
quences when she is driven to bay — she answered him instantly, 

“ I have heard you are a Rogue.” 

“ Have you, indeed ?” said the impenetrable Wragge. “ A Rogue ? 
Well, I waive my privilege of setting you right on that point for a 
fitter time. For the sake of argument, let us say I am a Rogue. 
What is Mr. Huxtable ?” 

“A respectable man, or I should not have seen him in the house 
where we first met.” 

“ Very good. Now observe ! You talked of writing to Mr. Hux- 
table a minute ago. What do you think a respectable man is likely 
to do with a young lady who openly acknowledges that she has run 
away from her home and her friends to go on the stage ? My dear 
girl, on your own showing, it’s not a respectable man you want in 
your present predicament. It’s a Rogue — like me.” 

Magdalen laughed, bitterly. 

“ There is some truth in that,” she said. “ Thank you for recall- 
ing me to myselt and my circumstances. I have my end to gain — 
and who am I, to pick and choose the way of getting to it ? It is 
my turn to beg pardon now. I have been talking as if I was a 
young lady of family and position. Absurd ! We know better 
than that, don’t we, Captain Wragge? You are quite right. No- 
body’s child must sleep under Somebody’s roof — and why not 
yours ?” 

“This way,” said the captain, dexterously profiting by the sud- 
den change in her humor, and cunningly refraining from exaspera- 
ting it by saying more himself. “ This way.” 

She followed him a few steps, and suddenly stopped. 

“ Suppose I am discovered ?” she broke out, abruptly. “ Who has 
any authority over me ? Who can take me back, if I don’t choose 
to go ? If they all find me to-morrow, what then ? Can’t I say No 
to Mr. Pendril ? Can’t I trust my own courage with Miss Garth ?” 

“ Can you trust your courage with your sister ?” whispered the 
captain, who had not forgotten the references to Norah which had 
twice escaped her already. 

Her head drooped. She shivered as if the cold night air had 
struck her, and leaned back wearily against the parapet of the wall. 

“ Not with Norah,” she said, sadly. “ I could trust myself with 
the others. Not with Norah.” 

“This way,” repeated Captain Wragge. She roused herself; 
looked up at the darkening heaven, looked round at the darkening 
view. “ What must be, must,” she said, and followed him. 


174 


NO NAME. 


The Minster dock struck the quarter to eight as they left the' 
Walk on the Wall and descended the steps into Rosemary Lane. 
Almost at the same moment the lawyer’s clerk from London gave 
the last instructions to his subordinates, and took up his own posi- 
tion, on the opposite side of the river, within easy view of Mr. Hux- 
table’s door. 


CHAPTER II. 

Captain Wragge stopped nearly midway in the one little row 
of houses composing Rosemary Lane, and let himself and his guest 
in at the door of his lodgings with his own key. As they entered 
the passage, a care-worn woman in a widow’s cap made her appear- 
ance with a candle. “ My niece,” said the captain, presenting Mag- 
dalen; “my niece on a visit to York. She has kindly consented 
to occupy your empty bedroom. Consider it let, if you please, to 
my niece — and be very particular in airing the sheets ? Is Mrs. 
Wragge up stairs? Very good. You may lend me your candle. 
My dear girl, Mrs. Wragge’s boudoir is on the first floor ; Mrs. 
Wragge is visible. Allow me to show you the way up.” 

As he ascended the stairs first, the care-worn widow whispered, 
piteously, to Magdalen, “ I hope you’ll pay me, miss. Your uncle 
doesn’t.” 

The captain threw open the door of the front room on the first 
floor, and disclosed a female figure, arrayed in a gown of tarnished 
amber-colored satin, seated solitary on a small chair, with dingy old 
gloves on its hands, with a tattered old book on its knees, and with 
one little bedroom candle by its side. The figure terminated at its 
upper extremity in a large, smooth, white round face — like a moon 
—encircled by a cap and green ribbons, and dimly irradiated by 
eyes of mild and faded blue, which looked straightforward into 
vacancy, and took not the smallest notice of Magdalen’s appearance*, 
on the opening of the door. 

“Mrs. Wragge !” cried the captain, shouting at her as if she was 
fast asleep. “ Mrs. Wragge !” 

The lady of the faded blue eyes slowly rose to an apparently in- 
terminable height. When she had at last attained an upright posi- 
tion, she towered to a stature of two or three inches over six feet. 
Giants of both sexes are, by a wise dispensation of Providence, 
created, for the most part, gentle. If Mrs. Wragge and a lamb had 
been placed side by side, comparison, under those circumstances, 
would have exposed the lamb as a rank impostor. 

“Tea, captain?” inquired Mrs. Wragge, looking submissively 


NO NAME. 1 75 

down at her husband, whose head, when he stood on tiptoe, barely 
reached her shoulder. 

“Miss Yanstone, the younger,” said the captain, presenting Mag- 
dalen. “ Our fair relative, whom I have met by fortunate accident. 
Our guest for the night. Our guest 1” reiterated the captain, shout- 
ing once more as if the tall lady was still fast asleep, in spite of the 
plain testimony of her own eyes to the contrary. 

A smile expressed itself (in faint outline) on the large vacant 
space of Mrs. Wragge’s countenance. “ Oh ?” she said, interrogative- 
ly. “ Oh, indeed ? Please, miss, will you sit down ? I’m sorry — 
no, I don’t mean I’m sorry ; I mean I’m glad — ” she stopped, and 
consulted her husband by a helpless look. 

“ Glad, of course !” shouted the captain. 

“ Glad, of course,” echoed the giantess of the amber satin, more 
meekly than ever. 

“Mrs. Wragge is not deaf,” explained the captain. “ She’s only 
a little slow. Constitutionally torpid — if I may use the expression. 
I am merely loud with her (and I beg you will honor me by being 
loud, too) as a necessary stimulant to her ideas. Shout at her — and 
her mind comes up to time. Speak to her — and she drifts miles 
away from you directly. Mrs. Wragge !” 

Mrs. Wragge instantly acknowledged the stimulant. “Tea, cap- 
tain ?” she inquired, for the second time. 

“ Put your cap straight !” shouted her husband. “ I beg ten 
thousand pardons,” he resumed, again addressing himself to Mag- 
dalen. “ The sad truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. 
All untidiness, all want of system and regularity, causes me the 
acutest irritation. My attention is distracted, my composure is up- 
set ; I can’t rest till things are set straight again. Externally speak- 
ing, Mrs. Wragge is, to my infinite regret, the crookedest woman I 
ever met with. More to the right !” shouted the captain, as Mrs. 
Wragge, like a well-trained child, presented herself with her revised 
head-dress for her husband’s inspection. 

Mrs. Wragge immediately pulled the cap to the left. Magdalen 
rose, and set it right for her. The moon-face of the giantess bright- 
ened for the first time. She looked admiringly at Magdalen’s cloak 
and bonnet. “ Do you like dress, miss ?” she asked, suddenly, in a 
confidential whisper. “ I do.” 

“Show Miss Yanstone her room,” said the captain, looking as if 
the whole house belonged to him. “The spare-room, the land- 
lady’s spare-room, on the third floor front. Offer Miss Yanstone all 
articles connected with the toilet of which she may stand in need. 
She has no luggage with her. Supply the deficiency, and then 
come back and make tea.” 

Mrs. Wragge acknowledged the receipt of these lofty directions 


176 


NO NAME. 


by a look of placid bewilderment, and led the way out of the room ; 
Magdalen following her, w T ith a candle presented by the attentive 
captain. As soon as they were alone on the landing outside, Mrs. 
Wragge raised the tattered old book which she had been reading 
when Magdalen was first presented to her, and which she had never 
let out of her hand since, and slowly tapped herself on the forehead 
with it. “ Oh, my poor head !” said the tall lady, in meek solilo- 
quy ; “ it’s Buzzing again worse than ever !” 

“ Buzzing ?” repeated Magdalen, in the utmost astonishment. 

Mrs. Wragge ascended the stairs, without offering any explana- 
tion, stopped at one of the rooms on the second floor, and led the 
way in. 

“ This is not the third floor,” said Magdalen. “ This is not my 
room, surely?” 

“Wait a bit,” pleaded Mrs. Wragge. “Wait a bit, miss, before 
we go up any higher. I’ve got the Buzzing in my head worse than 
ever. Please wait for me till I’m a little better again.” 

“ Shall I ask tor help ?” inquired Magdalen. “ Shall I call the 
landlady ?” 

“Help?” echoed Mrs. Wragge. “Bless you, I don’t want help! 
I’m used to it. I’ve had the Buzzing in my head, off and on — how 
many years?” She stopped, reflected, lost herself, and suddenly 
tried a question in despair. “ Have you ever been at Darch’s Din- 
ing-rooms in London ?” she asked, with an appearance of the deep- 
est interest. 

“ No,” replied Magdalen, wondering at the strange inquiry. 

“ That’s where the Buzzing in my head first began,” said Mrs. 
Wragge, following the new clue with the deepest attention and 
anxiety. “I was employed to wait on the gentlemen at Darch’s 
Dining-rooms — I was. The gentlemen all came together ; the gen- 
tlemen were all hungry together; the gentlemen all gave their or- 
ders together — ” She stopped, and tapped her head again, de- 
spondently, with the tattered old book. 

“And you had to keep all their orders in your memory, separate 
one from the other?” suggested Magdalen, helping her out. “And 
the trying to do that confused you ?” 

“That’s it!” said Mrs. Wragge, becoming violently excited in a 
moment. “ Boiled pork and greens and pease-pudding, for Number 
One. Stewed beef and carrots and gooseberry tart, for Number 
Two. Cut of mutton, and quick about it, well done, and plenty of 
fat, for Number Three. Codfish and parsnips, two chops to follow, 
hot-and-hot, or I’ll be the death of you, for Number Four. Five,* 
six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Carrots and gooseberry tart — pease-pud- 
ding and plenty of fat — pork and beef and mutton, and cut ’em all, 
and quick about it — stout for one, and ale for t’other — and stale 


NO NAME. 


1 11 


bread here, and new bread there — and this gentleman likes cheese, 
and that gentleman doesn’t — Matilda, Tilda, Tilda, Tilda, fifty times 
over, till I didn’t know my own name again — oh lord ! oh lord ! ! oh 
lord ! ! ! all together, all at the same time, all out of temper, all buzz- 
ing in my poor head like forty thousand million bees — don’t tell 
the captain ! don’t tell the captain !” The unfortunate creature 
dropped the tattered old book, and beat both her hands on her 
head, with a look of blank terror fixed on the door. 

“ Hush ! hush !” said Magdalen. “ The captain hasn’t heard you. 
I know what is the matter with your head now. Let me cool it.” 

She dipped a towel in water, and pressed it on the hot and help- 
less head which Mrs. Wragge submitted to her with the docility of 
a sick child. 

“ What a pretty hand you’ve got !” said the poor creature, feeling 
the relief of the coolness, and taking Magdalen’s hand, admiringly, 
in her own. “ How soft and white it is ! I try to be a lady ; I al- 
ways keep my gloves on — but I can’t get my hands like yours. I’m 
nicely dressed, though, ain’t I ? I like dress ; it’s a comfort to me. 
I’m always happy when I’m looking at my things. I say — you 
won’t be angry with me ? — I should so like to try your bonnet on.” 

Magdalen humored her, with the ready compassion of the young. 
She stood smiling and nodding at herself in the glass, with the bon- 
net perched on the top of her head. “ I had one as pretty as this, 
once,” she said — “ only it was white, not black. I wore it when the 
captain married me.” 

“ Where did you meet with him ?” asked Magdalen, putting the 
question as a chance means of increasing her scanty stock of infor- 
mation on the subject of Captain Wragge. 

“At the Dining-rooms,” said Mrs. Wragge. “He was the hungri- 
est and the loudest to wait upon of the lot of ’em. I made more 
mistakes with him than I did with all the rest of them put together. 
He used to swear — oh, didn’t he use to swear ! When he left off 
swearing at me, he married me. There was others wanted me be- 
sides him. Bless you, I had my pick. Why not ? When you have 
a trifle of money left you that you didn’t expect, if that don’t make 
a lady of you, what does ? Isn’t a lady to have her pick ? I had 
my trifle of money, and I had my pick, and I picked the captain — I 
did. He was the smartest and the shortest of them all. He took 
care of me and my money. I’m here, the money’s gone. Don’t you 
put that towel down on the table — he won’t have that ! Don’t 
move his razors — don’t, please, or I shall forget which is which. 
I’ve got to remember which is which to-morrow morning. Bless 
you, the captain don’t shave himself ! He had me taught. I shave 
him. I do his hair, and cut his nails — he’s awfully particular about 
his nails. So he is about his trowsers. And his shoes. And his 


178 


NO NAME. 


newspaper in the morning. And his breakfasts, and lunches, and 
dinners, and teas — ” She stopped, struck by a sudden recollection, 
looked about her, observed the tattered old book on the floor, and 
clasped her hands in despair. “I’ve lost the place !” she exclaimed, 
helplessly. u Oh, mercy, what will become of me ! I’ve lost the 
place.” 

“ Never mind,” said Magdalen ; “ I’ll soon find the place for you 
again.” 

She picked up the book, looked into the pages, and found that 
the object of Mrs. Wragge's anxiety was nothing more important 
than an old-fashioned Treatise on the Art of Cookery, reduced un- 
der the usual heads of Fish, Flesh, and Fowl, and containing the 
customary series of receipts. Turning over the leaves, Magdalen 
came to one particular page, thickly studded with little drops of 
moisture half dry. “ Curious !” she said. a If this was any thing but 
a cookery-book, I should say somebody had been crying over it.” 

“Somebody?” echoed Mrs. Wragge, with a stare of amazement. 
“ It isn’t somebody — it’s Me. Thank you kindly, that’s the place 
sure enough. Bless you, I’m used to crying over it. You’d cry 
too, if you had to get the captain’s dinners out of it. As sure as 
ever I sit down to this book, the Buzzing in my head begins again. 
Who’s to make it out ? Sometimes I think I’ve got it, and it all 
goes away from me. Sometimes I think I haven’t got it, and it 
all comes back in a heap. Look here ! Here’s what he’s ordered 
for his breakfast to-morrow : ‘ Omelette with Herbs. Beat up two 
eggs with a little water or milk, salt, pepper, chives, and parsley. 
Mince small.’ — There ! mince small ! How am I to mince small 
when it’s all mixed up and running ? ‘ Put a piece of butter the 

size of your thumb into the frying-pan.’ — Look at my thumb, and 
look at yours ! whose size does she mean ? ‘ Boil, but not brown.’ 

— If it mustn’t be brown, what color must it be ? She won’t tell 
me ; she expects me to know, and I don’t. ‘ Pour in the omelette.’ 
—There ! I can do that. ‘ Allow it to set, raise it round the edge ; 
when done, turn it over to double it.’ — Oh, the number of times I 
turned it over and doubled it in my head, before you came in to- 
night ! ‘ Keep it soft ; put the dish on the frying-pan, and turn it 

over.’ Which am I to turn over — oh, mercy, try the cold towel 
again, and tell me which — the dish or the frying-pan ?” 

“Put the dish on the frying-pan,” said Magdalen; “and then 
turn the frying-pan over. That is what it means, I think.” 

“Thank you kindly,” said Mrs. Wragge, “ I want to get it into 
my head ; please say it again.” 

Magdalen said it again. 

“And then turn the frying-pan over,” repeated Mrs. Wragge, with 
a sudden burst of energy. “ I’ve got it now ! Oh, the lots of ome- 


NO NAME. 


1Y9 


lettes all frying together in my head ; and all frying wrong ! Much 
obliged, I’m sure. You’ve put me all right again : I’m only a little 
tired with talking. And then turn the frying-pan, then turn the 
frying-pan, then turn the frying-pan over. It sounds like poetry, 
don’t it ?” 

Her voice sank, and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same 
moment the door of the room below opened, and the captain’s mel- 
lifluous bass notes floated up stairs, charged with the customary 
stimulant to his wife’s faculties. 

“ Mrs. Wragge !” cried the captain. “ Mrs. Wragge !” 

She started to her feet at that terrible summons. “ Oh, what did 
he tell me to do ?” she asked, distractedly. “ Lots of things, and 
I’ve forgotten them all !” 

“ Say you have done them when he asks you,” suggested Mag- 
dalen. “ They were things for me — things I don’t want. I remem- 
ber all that is necessary. My room is the front room on the third 
floor. Go down stairs and say I am coming directly.” 

She took up the candle and pushed Mrs. Wragge out on the land- 
ing. “ Say I am coming directly,” she whispered again — and went 
up stairs by herself to the third story. 

The room was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former 
days Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one 
of the servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a 
few minutes alone ; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that 
account. She locked herself in and walked mechanically, with a 
woman’s first impulse in a strange bedroom, to the rickety little ta- 
ble and the dingy little looking-glass. She waited there for a mo- 
ment, and then turned away with weary contempt. “ What does it 
matter how pale I am ?” she thought to herself. “ Frank can’t see 
me — what does it matter now !” 

She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to collect her- 
self. But the events of the day had worn her out. The past, when 
she tried to remember it, only made her heart ache. The future, 
when she tried to penetrate it, was a black void. She rose again, 
and stood by the uncurtained window — stood looking out, as if 
there was some hidden sympathy for her own desolation in the 
desolate night. 

“Norah!” she said to herself, tenderly ; “I wonder if Norah is 
thinking of me ? Oh, if I could be as patient as she is ! If I could 
only forget the debt we owe to Michael Yanstone !” 

Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the 
little cage of a room backward and forward, softly. “ No : never 
till the debt is paid !” Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. 
“ Still at sea, poor fellow ; farther and farther away from me ; sail' 


180 


NO NAME. 


ing through the day, sailing through the night. Oh, Frank, love 
me !” 

Her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away, made for the 
door, and laughed with a desperate levity, as she unlocked it again. 

“Any company is better than my own thoughts,” she burst out, 
recklessly, as she left the room. “I’m forgetting my ready-made 
relations — my half-witted aunt, and my uncle the rogue.” She de- 
scended the stairs to the landing on the first floor, and paused there 
in momentary hesitation. “ How will it end ?” she asked herself. 
“Where is my blindfolded journey taking me to now? Who 
knows, and who cares ?” 

She entered the room. 

Captain Wragge was presiding at the tea-tray with the air of a 
prince in his own banqueting-hall. At one side of the table sat Mrs. 
Wragge, watching her husband’s eye like an animal waiting to be 
fed. At the other side was an empty chair, toward which the cap- 
tain waved his persuasive hand when Magdalen came in. “How 
do you like your room?” he inquired; “I trust Mrs. Wragge has 
made herself useful? You take milk and sugar? Try the local 
bread, honor the York butter, test the freshness of a new and neigh- 
boring egg. I offer my little all. A pauper’s meal, my dear girl — 
seasoned with a gentleman’s welcome.” 

“ Seasoned with salt, pepper, chives, and parsley,” murmured Mrs. 
Wragge, catching instantly at a word in connection with cookery, 
and harnessing her head to the omelette for the rest of the evening. 

“ Sit straight at the table !” shouted the captain. “ More to the 
left, more still — that will do. During your absence up stairs,” he 
continued, addressing himself to Magdalen, “ my mind has not been 
unemployed. I have been considering your position with a view 
exclusively to your own benefit. If you decide on being guided to- 
morrow by the light of my experience, that light is unreservedly at 
your service. You may naturally say, ‘I know but little of you, 
captain, and that little is unfavorable.’ Granted, on one condition 
— that you permit me to make myself and my character quite famil- 
iar to you when tea is over. False shame is foreign to my nature. 
You see my wife, my house, my bread, my butter, and my eggs, 
all exactly as they are. See me, too, my dear girl, while you are 
about it.” 

When tea was over, Mrs. Wragge, at a signal from her husband, 
retired to a corner of the room, with the eternal cookery-book still 
in her hand. “ Mince small,” she whispered, confidentially, as she 
passed Magdalen. “ That’s a teaser, isn’t it?” 

“ Down at heel again !” shouted the captain, pointing to his wife’s 
heavy flat feet as they shuffled across the room. “ The right shoe 


NO NAME. 


181 


Pull it up at heel, Mrs. Wragge — pull it up at heel! Pray allow 
me,” he continued, offering his arm to Magdalen, and escorting hef 
to a dirty little horse-hair sofa. “You want repose — after your long 
journey, you really want repose.” He drew his chair to the sofa, 
and surveyed her with a bland look of investigation — as if he had 
been her medical attendant, with a diagnosis on his mind. 

“Very pleasant! very pleasant!” said the captain, when he had 
seen his guest comfortable on the sofa. “I feel quite in the bo- 
som of my family. Shall we return to our subject — the subject of 
my rascally self? No! no! No apologies, no protestations, pray. 
Don’t mince the matter on your side — and depend on me not to 
mince it on mine. Now come to facts ; pray come to facts. Who, 
and what am I ? Carry your mind back to our conversation on the 
W alls of this interesting city, and let us start once more from your 
point of view. I am a Rogue ; and, in that capacity (as I have al- 
ready pointed out), the most useful man you possibly could have met 
with. Now observe ! There are many varieties of Rogue ; let me 
tell you my variety, to begin with. I am a Swindler.” 

His entire shamelessness was really superhuman. Not the vestige 
of a blush varied the sallow monotony of his complexion ; the smile 
wreathed his curly lips as pleasantly as ever ; his party-colored eyes 
twinkled at Magdalen, with the self-enjoying frankness of a natural- 
ly harmless man. Had his wife heard him ? Magdalen looked over 
his shoulder to the corner of the room in which she was sitting be- 
hind him. No : the self-taught student of cookery was absorbed in 
her subject. She had advanced her imaginary omelette to the crit- 
ical stage at which the butter was to be thrown in — that vaguely- 
measured morsel of butter, the size of your thumb. Mrs. Wragge 
sat lost in contemplation of one of her own thumbs, and shook her 
head over it, as if it failed to satisfy her. 

“ Don’t be shocked,” proceeded the captain ; “ don’t be astonished. 
Swindler is nothing but a word of two syllables, s, w, i, n, d — 
swind ; l, e, r — ler ; Swindler. Definition : A moral agriculturist ; 
a man who cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral 
agriculturist, that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, 
envious of my success in my profession, calls me a Swindler. What 
of that ? The same low tone of mind assails men in other profes- 
sions in a similar manner — calls great writers scribblers — great gen- 
erals, butchers — and so on. It entirely depends on the point of 
view. Adopting your point, I announce myself intelligibly as a 
Swindler. Now return the obligation, and adopt mine. Hear what 
I have to say for myself, in the exercise of my profession. — Shall I 
continue to put it frankly ?” 

“ Yes,” said Magdalen ; “ and I’ll tell you frankly afterward what 
I think of it.” 


182 


NO NAME. 


The captain cleared his throat ; mentally assembled his entire 
army of words — horse, foot, artillery, and reserves ; put himself at 
the head ; and dashed into action, to carry the moral intrenchments 
of Society by a general charge. 

“ Now, observe,” he began. “ Here am I, a needy object. Very 
good. Without complicating the question by asking how I come 
to be in that condition, I will merely inquire whether it is, or is not, 
the duty of a Christian community to help the needy. If you say 
No, you simply shock me ; and there is an end of it. If you say 
Yes, then I beg to ask, Why am I to blame for making a Christian 
community do its duty? You may say, Is a careful man who has 
saved money bound to spend it again on a careless stranger who has 
saved none ? Why of course he is ! And on what ground, pray ? 
Good heavens ! on the ground that he has got the money, to be sure. 
All the world over, the man who has not got the thing, obtains it, 
on one pretense or another, of the man who has — and, in nine cases 
out of ten, the pretense is a false one. What ! your pockets are full, 
and my pockets are empty; and you refuse to help me? Sordid 
wretch ! do you think I will allow you to violate the sacred obliga- 
tions of charity in my person ? I won’t allow you — I say distinct- 
ly, I won’t allow you. Those are my principles as a moral agricul- 
turist. Principles which admit of trickery ? Certainly. Am I to 
blame if the field of human sympathy can’t be cultivated in any oth- 
er way ? Consult my brother agriculturists in the mere farming line 
— do they get their crops for the asking ? No ! they must circum- 
vent arid Nature exactly as I circumvent sordid Man. They must 
plow, and sow, and top-dress, and bottom-dress, and deep-drain, and 
surface-drain, and all the rest of it. Why am I to be checked in the 
vast occupation of deep-draining mankind ? Why am I to be perse- 
cuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our common na- 
ture ? Infamous ! — I can characterize it by no other word — infa- 
mous ! If I hadn’t confidence in the future, I should despair of hu- 
manity — but I have confidence in the future. Yes! one of these 
days (when I am dead and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlighten- 
ment progresses, the abstract merits of the profession now called 
swindling will be recognized. When that clay comes, don’t drag 
me out of my grave and give me a public funeral ; don’t take advan- 
tage of my having no voice to raise in my own defense, and insult 
me by a national statue. No ! do me justice on my tombstone ; 
dash me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph. Here lies 
Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species : he plow- 
ed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures ; and enlightened poster- 
ity congratulates him on the uniform excellence of his crops.” 

He stopped ; not from want of confidence, not from want of words 
— purely from want of breath, “ I put it frankly, with a dash of 


NO NAME. 


183 


humor,” he said, pleasantly. “I don’t shock you — do I?” Weary 
and heart-sick as she was — suspicious of others, doubtful of herself 
— the extravagant impudence of Captain Wragge’s defense of swin- 
dling touched Magdalen’s natural sense of humor, and forced a smile 
to her lips. “ Is the Yorkshire crop a particularly rich one just at 
present ?” she inquired, meeting him, in her neatly feminine way, 
with his own weapons. 

“A hit — a palpable hit,” said the captain, jocosely exhibiting the 
tails of his threadbare shooting-jacket, as a practical commentary on 
Magdalen’s remark. “ My dear girl, here or elsewhere, the crop nev- 
er fails — but one man can’t always gather it in. The assistance of 
intelligent co-operation is, I regret to say, denied me. I have noth- 
ing in common with the clumsy rank and file of my profession, who 
convict themselves, before recorders and magistrates, of the worst of 
all offenses — incurable stupidity in the exercise of their own voca- 
tion. Such as you see me, I stand entirely alone. After years of 
successful self-dependence, the penalties of celebrity are beginning 
to attach to me. On my way from the North, I pause at this inter- 
esting city for the third time ; I consult my Books for the custom- 
ary references to past local experience; I find under the heading, 
‘ Personal position in York,’ the initials, T. W. K., signifying Too 
Well Known. I refer to my Index, and turn to the surrounding 
neighborhood. The same brief marks meet my eye. ‘Leeds. 
T. W. K. — Scarborough. T. W. K. — Harrowgate. T. W. K.’ — and 
so on. What is the inevitable consequence ? I suspend my pro- 
ceedings ; my resources evaporate ; and my fair relative finds me the 
pauper gentleman whom she now sees before her.” 

“ Your books ?” said Magdalen. “ What books do you mean ?” 

“ You shall see,” replied the captain. “ Trust me, or not, as you 
like — I trust you implicitly. You shall see.” 

With those words he retired into the back room. While he was 
gone, Magdalen stole another look at Mrs. Wragge. Was she still 
self-isolated from her husband’s deluge of words ? Perfectly self-iso- 
lated. She had advanced the imaginary omelette to the last stage 
of culinary progress ; and she was now rehearsing the final operation 
of turning it over — with the palm of her hand to represent the dish, 
and the cookery-book to impersonate the frying-pan. “ I’ve got it,” 
said Mrs. Wragge, nodding across the room at Magdalen. “First 
put the frying-pan on the dish, and then tumble both of them over.” 

Captain Wragge returned, carrying a neat black dispatch-box, 
adorned with a bright brass lock. He produced from the box five 
or six plump little books, bound in commercial calf and vellum, and 
each fitted comfortably with its own little lock. 

“ Mind !” said the moral agriculturist, “ I take no credit to myself 
for this : it is my nature to be orderly, and orderly I am. I must 


184 


NO NAME. 


have every thing down in black and white, or I should go mad! 
Here is my commercial library : Day-book, Ledger, Book of Dis- 
tricts, Book of Letters, Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw 
your eye over any one of them. I flatter myself there is no such 
thing as a blot, or a careless entry in it, from the first page to the 
last. Look at this room — is there a chair out of place ? Not if I 
know it ! Look at me . Am I dusty ? am I dirty ? am I half 
shaved ? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I not ? Mind ! 

I take no credit to myself ; the nature of the man, my dear girl— 
the nature of the man !” 

He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the ad- 
mirable correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; 
but she could estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regular- 
ity in the rows of figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled 
lines in red and black ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or 
erasures. Although Captain Wragge’s inborn sense of order was 
in him — as it is in others— a sense too inveterately mechanical to 
exercise any elevating moral influence over his actions, it had pro- 
duced its legitimate effect on his habits, and had reduced his rogu- 
eries as strictly to method and system as if they had been the com- 
mercial transactions of an honest man. 

“ In appearance, my system looks complicated ?” pursued the cap- . 
tain. “ In reality, it is simplicity itself. I merely avoid the errors 
of inferior practitioners. That is to say, I never plead for myself ; 
and I never apply to rich people — both fatal mistakes which the in- 
ferior practitioner perpetually commits. People with small means 
sometimes have generous impulses in connection with money — rich 
people, never. My lord, with forty thousand a year ; Sir John, with 
property in half a dozen counties — those are the men who never 
forgive the genteel beggar for swindling them out of a sovereign ; 
those are the men who send for the mendicity officers; those are 
the men who take care of their money. Who are the people who 
lose shillings and sixpences by sheer thoughtlessness ? Servants 
and small clerks, to whom shillings and sixpences are of conse- 
quence. Did you ever hear of Rothschild or Baring dropping a 
fourpenny-piece down a gutter-hole ? Fourpence in Rothschild’s 
pocket is safer than fourpence in the pocket of that woman who is 
crying stale shrimps in Skeldergate at this moment. Fortified by 
these sound principles, enlightened by the stores of written informa- 
tion in my commercial library, I have ranged through the popula- 
tion for years past, and have raised my charitable crops with the 
most cheering success. Here, in book Number One, are all my Dis- 
tricts mapped out, with the prevalent public feeling to appeal to in 
each : Military District, Clerical District, Agricultural District ; et 
cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Two, are my cases that I plead : 


NO NAME. 


185 


Family of an officer who fell at Waterloo; Wife of a poor curate 
stricken down by nervous debility ; Widow of a grazier in difficul- 
ties gored to death by a mad bull ; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in 
Number Three, are the people who have heard of the officer’s family, 
the curate’s wife, the grazier’s widow, and the people who haven’t ; 
the people who have said Yes, and the people who have said No; 
the people to try again, the people who want a fresh case to stir 
them up, the people who are doubtful, the people to beware of ; et 
cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Four, are my Adopted Hand- 
writings of public characters; my testimonials to my own worth 
and integrity ; my Heart-rending Statements of the officer’s family, 
the curate’s wife, and the grazier’s widow, stained with tears, blot- 
ted with emotion ; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Numbers Five and 
Six, are my own personal subscriptions to local charities, actually 
paid in remunerative neighborhoods, on the principle of throwing a 
sprat to catch a herring ; also, my diary of each day’s proceedings, 
my personal reflections and remarks, my statement of existing diffi- 
culties (such as the difficulty of finding myself T. W. K. in this in- 
teresting city) ; my outgoings and incomings ; wind and weather ; 
politics and public events ; fluctuations in my own health ; fluctua- 
tions in Mrs. Wragge’s head; fluctuations in our means and meals, 
our payments, prospects, and principles ; et cetera, et cetera. So, 
my dear girl, the Swindler’s Mill goes. So you see me exactly as I 
am. You knew, before I met you, that I lived on my wits. Well ! 
have I, or have I not, shown you that I have wits to live on ?” 

“ I have no doubt you have done yourself full justice,” said Mag- 
dalen, quietly. 

“ I am not at all exhausted,” continued the captain. “ I can go 
on, if necessary, for the rest of the evening. — However, if I have 
done myself full justice, perhaps I may leave the remaining points 
in my character to develop themselves at future opportunities. For 
the present, I withdraw myself from notice. Exit Wragge. And 
now to business ! Permit me to inquire what effect I have produced 
on your own mind ? Do you still believe that the Rogue who has 
trusted you with all his secrets is a Rogue who is bent on taking a 
mean advantage of a fair relative ?” 

“ I will wait a little,” Magdalen rejoined, u before I answer that 
question. When I came down to tea, you told me you had been 
employing your mind for my benefit. May I ask how ?” 

“ By all means,” said Captain Wragge. “ You shall have the net 
result of the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the 
present and future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of 
the lawyers who are helping them to find you. Their present pro- 
ceedings are, in all probability, assuming the following form : the 
lawyer’s clerk has given you up at Mr. Huxtable’s, and has also, by 


186 


NO NAME. 


this time, given you up, after careful inquiry at all the hotels. His 
last chance is that you may send for your box to the cloak-room — 
you don’t send for it — and there the clerk is to-night (thanks to 
Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane) at the end of his resources. 
He will forthwith communicate that fact to his employers in Lon- 
don; and those employers (don’t be alarmed!) will apply for help 
to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable delays, a profes- 
sional spy, with all his wits about him, and with those handbills 
to help him privately in identifying you, will be here certainly not 
later than the day after to-morrow — possibly earlier. If you remain 
in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable, that 
spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city be- 
fore he comes (taking your departure by other means than the rail- 
way, of course), you put him in the same predicament as the clerk 
— you defy him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief ab- 
stract of your present position. What do you think of it ?” 

u I think it has one defect,” said Magdalen. “ It ends in nothing.” 

“Pardon me,” retorted the captain. “It ends in an arrangement 
for your safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of 
your wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the re- 
sources of my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, 
to be poured forth immediately in the fullest detail.” 

“ I think I know what that word is,” replied Magdalen, looking 
at him attentively. 

“ Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, ‘ Captain 
Wragge, take charge of me ’ — and my plans are yours from that 
moment.” 

“I will take to-night to consider your proposal,” she said, after 
an instant’s reflection. “You shall have my answer to-morrow 
morning.” 

Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not ex- 
pected the reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a 
reservation on hers. 

“ Why not decide at once ?” he remonstrated, in his most persua- 
sive tones. “You have only to consider — ” 

“ I have more to consider than you think for,” she answered. “ I 
have another object in view besides the object you know of.” 

“ May I ask — ?” 

“Excuse me, Captain Wragge — you may not ask. Allow me to 
thank you for your hospitality, and to wish you good-night. I am 
worn out. I want rest.” 

Once more the captain wisely adapted himself to her humor with 
the ready self-control of an experienced man. 

“ Worn out, of course !” he said, sympathetically. “ Unpardon- 
able on my part not to have thought of it before. We will resume 


NO NAME. 


187 


our conversation to-morrow. Permit me to give you a candle. Mrs. 
Wragge !” 

Prostrated by mental exertion, Mrs. Wragge was pursuing the 
course of the omelette in dreams. Her head was twisted one way, 
and her body the other. She snored meekly. At intervals one of 
her hands raised itself in the air, shook an imaginary frying-pan, 
and dropped again with a faint thump on the cookery-book in her 
lap. At the sound of her husband’s voice, she started to her feet, 
and confronted him with her mind fast asleep, and her eyes wide 
open. 

“Assist Miss Vanstone,” said the captain. “And the next time 
you forget yourself in your chair, fall asleep straight — don’t annoy 
me by falling asleep crooked.” 

Mrs. Wragge opened her eyes a little wider, and looked at Mag- 
dalen in helpless amazement. 

“ Is the captain breakfasting by candle-light ?” she inquired, meek- 
ly. “ And haven’t I done the omelette ?” 

Before her husband’s corrective voice could apply a fresh stimu- 
lant, Magdalen took her comoassionately by the arm and led her 
out of the room. 

“Another object besides the object I know of?” repeated Captain 
Wragge, when he was left by himself. “ Is there a gentleman in the 
background, after all ? Is there mischief brewing in the dark that 
I don’t bargain for ?” 


CHAPTER III. 

Toward six o’clock the next morning, the light pouring in on 
her face awoke Magdalen in the bedroom in Rosemary Lane. 

She started from her deep, dreamless repose of the past night with 
that painful sense of bewilderment, on first waking, which is familiar 
to all sleepers in strange beds. “ Norah !” she called out mechan- 
ically, when she opened her eyes. The next instant her mind 
roused itself, and her senses told her the truth. She looked round 
the miserable room with a loathing recognition of it. The sordid 
contrast which the place presented to all that she had been accus- 
tomed to see in her own bed-chamber — the practical abandonment, 
implied in its scanty furniture, of those elegant purities of personal 
habit to which she had been accustomed from her childhood — 
shocked that sense of bodily self-respect in Magdalen which is a re- 
fined woman’s second nature. Contemptible as the influence seem- 
ed, when compared with her situation at that moment, the bare 
sight of the jug and basin in a corner of the room decided her first 


168 


NO NAME. 


resolution when she woke. She determined, then and there, to 
leave Rosemary Lane. 

How was she to leave it ? With Captain Wragge, or without him ? 

She dressed herself, with a dainty shrinking from every thing in 
the room which her hands or her clothes touched in the process, 
and then opened the window. The autumn air felt keen and sweet; 
and the little patch of sky that she could see was warmly bright 
already with the new sunlight. Distant voices of bargemen on the 
river, and the chirping of birds among the weeds which topped the 
old city wall, were the only sounds that broke the morning silence. 
She sat down by the window; and searched her mind for the 
thoughts which she had lost, when weariness overcame her on the 
night before. 

The first subject to which she returned was the vagabond subject 
of Captain Wragge. 

The “ moral agriculturist ” had failed to remove her personal dis- 
trust of him, cunningly as he had tried to plead against it by open- 
ly confessing the impostures that he had practiced on others. He 
had raised her opinion of his abilities ; he had amused her by his 
humor ; he had astonished her by his assurance ; but he had left her 
original conviction that he was a Rogue exactly where it was when 
he first met with her. If the one design then in her mind had been 
the design of going on the stage, she would, at all hazards, have 
rejected the more than doubtful assistance of Captain Wragge on 
the spot. 

But the perilous journey on which she had now adventured her- 
self had another end in view — an end, dark and distant — an end, 
with pitfalls hidden on the way to it, far other than the shallow 
pitfalls on the way to the stage. In the mysterious stillness of the 
morning, her mind looked on to its second and its deeper design, 
and the despicable figure of the swindler rose before her in a new 
view. 

She tried to shut him out — to feel above him and beyond him 
again, as she had felt up to this time. 

After a little trifling with her dress, she took from her bosom the 
white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell 
night at Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with deli- 
cate silken strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was 
a lock of Frank’s hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread ; the next 
was a sheet of paper containing the extracts which she had copied 
from her father’s will and her father’s letter ; the last was a close- 
ly-folded packet of bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred 
pounds — the produce (as Miss Garth had rightly conjectured) of 
the sale of her jewelry and her dresses, in which the servant at 
the boarding-school had privately assisted her. She put back the 


NO NAME. 


i8b 


notes at once, without a second glance at them, and then sat look* 
mg thoughtfully at the lock of hair as it lay on her lap. “You are 
better than nothing,” she said, speaking to it with a girl’s fanci- 
ful tenderness. “ I can sit and look at you sometimes, till I almost 
think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling! my darling!” Her 
voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair, with a languid 
gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into her bosom. A 
lovely tinge of color rose on her cheeks, and spread downward to 
her neck, as if it followed the falling hair. She closed her eyes, and 
let her fair head droop softly. The world passed from her; and, 
for one enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise to 
the daughter of Eve. 

The trivial noises in the neighboring street, gathering in nunn 
ber as the morning advanced, forced her back to the hard realities 
of the passing time. She raised her head with a heavy sigh, 
and opened her eyes once more on the mean and miserable little 
room. 

The extracts from the will and the letter — those last memorials 
of her father, now so closely associated with the purpose which had 
possession of her mind — still lay before her. The transient color 
faded from her face, as she spread the little manuscript open on her 
lap. The extracts from the will stood highest on the page; they 
were limited to those few touching words, in which the dead father 
begged his children’s forgiveness for the stain on their birth, and 
implored them to remember the untiring love and care by which he 
had striven to atone for it. The extract from the letter to Mr. Pen- 
dril came next. She read the last melancholy sentences aloud to 
herself : “ For God’s sake come on the day when you receive this — 
come and relieve me from the dreadful thought that my two dar- 
ling girls are at this moment unprovided for. If any thing hap- 
pened to me, and if my desire to do their mother justice ended 
(through my miserable ignorance of the law) in leaving Norah and 
Magdalen disinherited, I should not rest in my grave !” Under 
these lines again, and close at the bottom of the page, was written 
the terrible commentary on that letter which had fallen from Mr. 
Pendril’s lips : “ Mr. Yanstone’s daughters are Nobody’s Children, 
and the law leaves them helpless at their uncle’s mercy.” 

Helpless when those words were spoken — helpless still, after all 
that she had resolved, after all that she had sacrificed. The asser- 
tion of her natural rights and her sister’s sanctioned by the direct 
expression of her father’s last wishes; the recall of Frank from 
China ; the justification of her desertion of Norah — all hung on her 
desperate purpose of recovering the lost inheritance, at any risk, 
from the man who had beggared and insulted his brother’s chil- 
dren. And that man was still a shadow to her ! So little did she 


190 


NO NAME. 


know of him, that she was even ignorant at that moment of his 
place of abode. 

She rose and paced the room with the noiseless, negligent grace 
of a wild creature of the forest in its cage. “ How can I reach him 
in the dark ?” she said to herself. u How can I find out — ?” She 
stopped suddenly. Before the question had shaped itself to an end 
in her thoughts, Captain Wragge was back in her mind again. 

A man well used to working in the dark ; a man with endless re- 
sources of audacity and cunning ; a man who would hesitate at no 
mean employment that could be offered to him, if it was employ- 
ment that filled his pockets — was this the instrument for which, in 
its present need, her hand was waiting ? Two of the necessities to 
be met, before she could take a single step in advance, were plainly 
present to her — the necessity of knowing more of her father’s broth- 
er than she knew now ; and the necessity of throwing him off his 
guard by concealing herself personally during the process of in- 
quiry. Resolutely self-dependent as she was, the inevitable spy’s 
work at the outset must be work delegated to another. In her 
position, was there any ready human creature within reach but the 
vagabond down stairs ? Not one. She thought of it anxiously, she 
thought of it long. Not one ! There the choice was, steadily con- 
fronting her : the choice of taking the Rogue, or of turning her back 
on the Purpose. 

She paused in the middle of the room. “ What can he do at his 
worst?” she said to herself. “Cheat me. Well! if my money gov- 
erns him for me, what then ? Let him have my money ! She re- 
turned mechanically to her place by the window. A moment more 
decided her. A moment more, and she took the first fatal step 
downward — she determined to face the risk, and try Captain 
Wragge. 

At nine o’clock the landlady knocked at Magdalen’s door, and 
informed her (with the captain’s kind compliments) that breakfast 
was ready. 

She found Mrs. Wragge alone, attired in a voluminous brown hol- 
land wrapper, with a limp cape, and a trimming of dingy pink rib- 
bon. The ex-waitress at Darch’s Dining-rooms was absorbed in 
the contemplation of a large dish, containing a leathery - looking 
substance of a mottled yellow color, profusely sprinkled with little 
black spots. 

“ There it is !” said Mrs. Wragge. “ Omelette with herbs. The 
landlady helped me. And that’s what we’ve made of it. Don’t 
you ask the captain for any when he comes in — don’t, there’s a good 
soul. It isn’t nice. We had some accidents with it. It’s been un- 
der the grate. It’s been spilled on the stairs. It’s scalded the land' 


tfo NAME. 


lady’s youngest boy — he went and sat on it. Bless you, it isn’t half 
as nice as it looks ! Don’t you ask for any. Perhaps he won’t no- 
tice if you say nothing about it. What do you think of my wrap- 
per ? I should so like to have a white one. Have you got a white 
one ? How is it trimmed ? Do tell me !” 

The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next ques- 
tion on her lips. Fortunately for Mrs. Wragge, her husband was 
tar too anxious for the promised expression of Magdalen’s decision 
to pay his customary attention to questions of cookery. When 
breakfast was over, he dismissed Mrs. Wragge, and merely referred 
to the omelette by telling her that she had his full, permission to 
“ give it to the dogs.” 

“ How does my little proposal look by daylight ?” he asked, pla- 
cing chairs for Magdalen and himself. “ Which is it to be : ‘ Captain 
Wragge, take charge of me V or, c Captain Wragge, good-morning?”’ 

“ You shall hear directly,” replied Magdalen. “ I have something 
to say first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in 
view besides the object of earning my living on the stage — ” 

“I beg your pardon,” interposed Captain Wragge. “Did you 
say, earning your living ?” 

“ Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own 
exertions to gain our daily bread.” 

“ What ! ! !” cried the captain, starting to his feet. “ The daugh- 
ters of my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage reduced to 
earn their own living ? Impossible — wildly, extravagantly impossi- 
ble !” He sat down again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had 
inflicted a personal injury on him. 

“ You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,” 
she said, quietly. “ I will tell you what has happened before I go 
any further.” She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could 
find, and with as few details as possible. 

Captain Wragge’s profound bewilderment left him conscious of 
but one distinct result, produced by the narrative on his own mind. 
The lawyer’s offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young 
lady ascended instantly to a place in his estimation which it had 
never occupied until that moment. 

“Do I understand,” he inquired, “that you are entirely deprived 
of present resources ?” 

“ I have sold my jewelry and my dresses,” said Magdalen, impa- 
tient of his mean harping on the pecuniary string. “ If my want 
of experience keeps me back in a theatre, I can afford to wait till 
tUe stage can afford to pay me.” 

Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets, and neck- 
laces, the silks, satins, and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of 
fortune, at — say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the 


192 


NO NAME. 


Fifty Pounds Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in 
the deep estimation of this judicious man. 

“ Just so,” he said, in his most business-like manner. “ There is 
not the least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theatre, 
if you possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance.” 

“I must accept more assistance than you have already offered — 
or none,” said Magdalen. “ I have more serious difficulties before 
me than the difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding 
my way to the stage.” 

“ You don’t say so ! I am all attention ; pray explain yourself!” 

She considered her next words carefully before they passed her 
lips. 

“ There are certain inquiries,” she said, “ which I am interested 
in making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspi- 
cion of the person inquired after, and should learn little or noth- 
ing of what I wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a 
stranger, without my being seen in the matter, a service would be 
rendered me of much greater importance than the service you offered 
last night.” 

Captain Wragge’s vagabond face became gravely and deeply at- 
tentive. 

“ May I ask,” he said, “ what the nature of the inquiries is likely 
to be ?” 

Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael 
Vanstone’s name, in informing the captain of the loss of her inher- 
itance. She must inevitably mention it to him again, if she em- 
ployed his services. He would doubtless discover it for himself, by 
a plain process of inference, before she said many words more, frame 
them as carefully as she might. Under these circumstances, was 
there any intelligible reason for shrinking from direct reference to 
Michael Vanstone? No intelligible reason — and yet she shrank. 

“For instance,” pursued Captain Wragge, “are they inquiries 
about a man or a woman ; inquiries about an enemy or a friend — ?” 

“ An enemy,” she answered, quickly. 

Her reply might still have kept the captain in the dark — but 
her eyes enlightened him. “ Michael Vanstone !” thought the wary 
Wragge. “ She looks dangerous ; I’ll feel my way a little further.” 

“ With regard, now, to the person who is the object of these in- 
quiries,” he resumed. “ Are you thoroughly clear in your own 
mind about what you want to know ?” 

“ Perfectly clear,” replied Magdalen. “ I want to know where he 
lives, to begin with ?” 

“Yes. And after that ?” 

“ I want to know about his habits ; about who the people are 
whom he associates with ; about what he does with his money — ” 


NO NAME. 


193 


She considered a little. “ And one thing more,” she said ; “ I want 
to know whether there is any woman about his house — a relation, 
or a housekeeper — who has an influence over him.” 

“ Harmless enough, so far,” said the captain. “ What next ?” 

u Nothing. The rest is my secret.” 

The clouds on Captain Wragge’s countenance began to clear away 
again. He reverted, with his customary precision, to his custom- 
ary choice of alternatives. “ These inquiries of hers,” he thought, 
“mean one of two things — Mischief, or Money! If it’s Mischief, 
I’ll slip through her fingers. If it’s Money, I’ll make myself useful, 
with a view to the future.” 

Magdalen’s vigilant eyes watched the progress of his reflections 
suspiciously. “Captain Wragge,” she said, “if you want time to 
consider, say so plainly.” 

“ I don’t want a moment,” replied the captain. “ Place your de- 
parture from York, your dramatic career, and your private inquiries 
under my care. Here I am, unreservedly at your disposal. Bay the 
word — do you take me ?” 

Her heart beat fast : her lips turned dry — but she said the word. 

“ I do.” 

There was a pause. Magdalen sat silent, struggling with the 
vague dread of the future which had been roused in her mind by 
her own reply. Captain Wragge, on his side, was apparently ab- 
sorbed in the consideration of a new set of alternatives. His hands 
descended into his empty pockets, and prophetically tested their 
capacity as receptacles for gold and silver. The brightness of the 
precious metals was in his face, the smoothness of the precious met- 
als was in his voice, as he provided himself with a new supply of 
words, and resumed the conversation. 

“ The next question,” he said, “ is the question of time. Do these 
confidential investigations of ours require immediate attention — or 
can they wait ?” 

“For the present, they can wait,” replied Magdalen. “I wish to 
secure my freedom from all interference on the part of my friends 
before the inquiries are made.” 

“ Very good. The first step toward accomplishing that object is 
to beat our retreat — excuse a professional metaphor from a milita- 
ry man — to beat our retreat from York to-morrow. I see my way 
plainly so far ; but I am all abroad, as we used to say in the militia, 
about my marching orders afterward. The next direction we take 
ought to be chosen with an eye to advancing your dramatic views. 
I am all ready, when I know what your views are. How came you 
to think of the theatre at all ? I see the sacred fire burning in you ; 
tell me, who lit it ?” 

Magdalen could only answer him in one way. She could only 


194 


NO NAME. 


look back at the days that were gone forever, and tell him the story 
of her first step toward the stage at Evergreen Lodge. Captain 
Wragge listened with his usual politeness; but he evidently de- 
rived no satisfactory impression from what he heard. Audiences 
of friends were audiences whom he privately declined to trust ; and 
the opinion of the stage-manager was the opinion of a man who 
spoke with his fee in his pocket, and his eye on a future engage- 
ment. 

“ Interesting, deeply interesting,” he said, when Magdalen had 
done. “But not conclusive to a practical man. A specimen of 
your abilities is necessary to enlighten me. I have been on the 
stage myself; the comedy of the Rivals is familiar to me from be- 
ginning to end. A sample is all I want, if you have not forgotten 
the words — a sample of k Lucy,’ and a sample of c Julia.’ ” 

“ I have not forgotten the words,” said Magdalen, sorrowfully ; 
“ and I have the little books with me in which my dialogue was 
written out. I have never parted with ; hem ; they remind me of a 
time — ” Her lip trembled, and a pang of the heart-ache silenced her. 

“ Nervous,” remarked the captain, indulgently. “ Not at all a bad 
sign. The greatest actresses on the stage are nervous. Follow their 
example, and get over it. Where are the parts ? Oh, here they are ! 
Very nicely written, and remarkably clean. I’ll give you the cues — 
it will all be over (as the dentists say) in no time. Take the back 
drawing-room for the stage, and take me for the audience. Tingle 
goes the bell ; up runs the curtain ; order in the gallery, silence in 
the pit — enter Lucy !” 

She tried hard to control herself ; she forced back the sorrow — 
the innocent, natural, human sorrow for the absent and the dead — 
pleading hard with her for the tears that she refused. Resolutely, 
with cold, clenched hands, she tried to begin. As the first familiar 
words passed her lips, Frank came back to her from the sea, and the 
face of her dead father looked at her with the smile of happy old 
times. The voices of her mother and her sister talked gently in the 
fragrant country stillness, and the garden - walks at Combe-Raven 
opened once more on her view. With a faint, wailing cry, she drop- 
ped into a chair ; her head fell forward on the table, and she burst 
passionately into tears. 

Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment. She shuddered as 
he came near her, and waved him back vehemently with her hand. 
“ Leave me !” she said ; “ leave me a minute by myself!” The com- 
pliant Wragge retired to the front room; looked out of window; 
and whistled under his breath. “ The family spirit again !” he said. 
“ Complicated by hysterics.” 

After waiting a minute or two, he returned to make inquiries. 

“ Is there any thing I can offer you ?” he asked. “ Cold water ? 


NO NAME. 


195 


burned feathers ? smelling-salts ? medical assistance ? Shall I sum- 
mon Mrs. Wragge ? Shall we put it off till to-morrow ?” 

She started up, wild and flushed, with a desperate self-command 
in her face, wdth an angry resolution in her manner. 

“ No I” she said. “ I must harden myself— and I will ! Sit down 
again and see me act.” 

“Bravo!” cried the captain. “Dash at it, my beauty — and it’s 
done !” 

She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herself — with a raised 
voice, and a glow like fever in her cheeks. All the artless, girlish 
charm of the performance in happier and better days was gone. 
The native dramatic capacity that was in her came, hard and bold, 
to the surface, stripped of every softening allurement which had 
once adorned it. She would have saddened and disappointed a 
man with any delicacy of feeling. She absolutely electrified Cap- 
tain Wragge. He forgot his politeness, he forgot his long words. 
The essential spirit of the man’s whole vagabond life burst out of 
him irresistibly in his first exclamation. “Who the devil would 
have thought it ? She can act, after all !” The instant the words 
escaped his lips he recovered himself, and glided off into his ordina- 
ry colloquial channels. Magdalen stopped him in the middle of his 
first compliment. “ No,” she said ; “ I have forced the truth out of 
you for once. I want no more.” 

“ Pardon me,” replied the incorrigible Wragge. “ You want a lit- 
tle instruction ; and I am the man to give it you.” 

With that answer, he placed a chair for her, and proceeded to ex- 
plain himself. 

She sat down in silence. A sullen indifference began to show it- 
self in her manner; her cheeks turned pale again; and her eyes 
looked wearily vacant at the wall before her. Captain Wragge no- 
ticed these signs of heart-sickness and discontent with herself, after 
the effort she had made, and saw the importance of rousing her by 
speaking, for once, plainly and directly to the point. She had set a 
new value on herself in his mercenary eyes. She had suggested to 
him a speculation in her youth, her beauty, and her marked ability 
for the stage, which had never entered his mind until he saw her 
act. The old militia-man was quick at his shifts. He and his plans 
had both turned right about together when Magdalen sat down to 
hear what he had to say. 

“ Mr. Huxtable’s opinion is my opinion,” he began. “ You are a 
bom actress. But you must be trained before you can do any thing 
on the stage. I am disengaged — I am competent — I have trained 
others — I can train you. Don’t trust my word : trust my eye to my 
own interests. I’ll make it my interest to take pains with you, and 
to be quick about it. You shall pay me for my instructions from 


196 


NO NAME. 


your profits on the stage. Half your salary for the first year ; a third 
of your salary for the second year ; and half the sum you clear by 
your first benefit in a London theatre. What do you say to that? 
Have I made it my interest to push you, or have I not ?” 

So far as appearances went, and so far as the stage went, it was 
plain that he had linked his interests and Magdalen’s together. She 
briefly told him so, and waited to hear more. 

“A month or six weeks’ study,” continued the captain, “ will give 
me a reasonable idea of what you can do best. All ability runs in 
grooves ; and your groove remains to be found. We can’t find it 
here — for we can’t keep you a close prisoner for weeks together in 
Rosemary Lane. A quiet country place, secure from all interference 
and interruption, is the place we want for a month certain. Trust 
my knowledge of Yorkshire, and consider the place found. I see no 
difficulties anywhere, except the difficulty of beating our retreat to- 
morrow.” 

“ I thought your arrangements were made last night ?” said Mag- 
dalen. 

“ Quite right,” rejoined the captain. “ They were made last 
night; and here they are. We can’t leave by railway, because the 
lawyer’s clerk is sure to be on the lookout for you at the York 
terminus. Very good ; we take to the road instead, and leave in 
our own carriage. Where the deuce do we get it ? We get it from 
the landlady’s brother, who has a horse and chaise which he lets 
out for hire. That chaise comes to the end of Rosemary Lane at 
an early hour to-morrow morning. I take my wife and my niece 
out to show them the beauties of the neighborhood. We have a 
picnic hamper with us, which marks our purpose in the public eye. 
You disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet, and veil of Mrs. Wragge’s; 
we turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip 
for the day — you and I on the front seat, Mrs. Wragge and the ham- 
per behind. Good again. Once on the high-road, what do we do ? 
Drive to the first station beyond York, northward, southward, or 
eastward, as may be hereafter determined. No lawyer’s clerk is 
waiting for you there. You and Mrs. Wragge get out — first open- 
ing the hamper at a convenient opportunity. Instead of containing 
chickens and Champagne, it contains a carpet-bag, with the things 
you want for the night. You take your tickets for a place previous- 
ly determined on, and I take the chaise back to York. Arrived 
once more in this house, I collect the luggage left behind, and send 
for the woman down stairs. ‘Ladies so charmed with such-and- 
such a place (wrong place of course), that they have determined to 
stop there. Pray accept the customary week’s rent, in place of a 
week’s warning. Good-day.’ Is the clerk looking for me at the 
York terminus? Not he. I take my ticket under his very nose; 


NO NAME. 


197 


I follow you with the luggage along your line of railway — and 
where is the trace left of your departure ? Nowhere. The fairy 
has vanished ; and the legal authorities are left in the lurch.” 

“ Why do you talk of difficulties ?” asked Magdalen. “ The diffi- 
culties seem to be provided for.” 

“All but one,” said Captain Wragge, with an ominous emphasis 
on the last word. “The Grand Difficulty of humanity from the 
cradle to the grave — Money.” He slowly winked his green eye; 
sighed with deep feeling ; and buried his insolvent hands in his un- 
productive pockets. 

“ What is the money wanted for ?” inquired Magdalen. 

“ To pay my bills,” replied the captain, with a touching simplici- 
ty. “ Pray understand ! I never was — and never shall be — person- 
ally desirous of paying a single farthing to any human creature on 
the habitable globe. I am speaking in your interest, not in mine.” 

“ My interest ?” 

“Certainly. You can’t get safely away from York to-morrow 
without the chaise. And I can’t get the chaise without money. 
The landlady’s brother will lend it if he sees his sister’s bill receipt- 
ed, and if he gets his day’s hire beforehand — not otherwise. Allow 
me to put the transaction in a business light. We have agreed that 
I am to be remunerated for my course of dramatic instruction out 
of your future earnings on the stage. Very good. I merely draw 
on my future prospects ; and you, on whom those prospects depend, 
are naturally my banker. For mere argument’s sake, estimate my 
share in your first year’s salary at the totally inadequate value of a 
hundred pounds. Halve that sum ; quarter that sum — ” 

“ How much do you want ?” said Magdalen, impatiently. 

Captain Wragge was sorely tempted to take the Reward at the 
top of the handbills as his basis of calculation. But he felt the 
vast future importance of present moderation ; and actually want- 
ing some twelve or thirteen pounds, he merely doubled the amount, 
and said, “ Five-and-twenty.” 

Magdalen took the little bag from her bosom, and gave him the 
money, with a contemptuous wonder at the number of words which 
he had wasted on her for the purpose of cheating on so small a 
scale. In the old days at Combe-Raven, five-and-twenty pounds 
flowed from a stroke of her father’s pen into the hands of any one 
in the house who chose to ask for it. 

Captain Wragge’s eyes dwelt on the little bag as the eyes of 
lovers dwell on their mistresses. “ Happy bag !” he murmured, as 
she put it back in her bosom. He rose ; dived into a corner of the 
room ; produced his neat dispatch-box ; and solemnly unlocked it 
on the table between Magdalen and himself. 

“ The nature of the man, my dear girl — the nature of the man,* 


198 


NO NAME. 


he said, opening one of his plump little books bound in calf and 
vellum. “ A transaction has taken place between us. I must have 
it down in black and white.” He opened the book at a blank page, 
and wrote at the top, in a fine mercantile hand : “ Miss Vanstone , 
the Younger : In account with Horatio Wragge , late of the Royal Mi- 
litia. D r ' — G r ’ Sept. 24£/q 1846. D r - : To estimated value of H. 
Wragge" s interest in Miss V."s first year's salary — say £200. C r - By 
paid on account , £25.” Having completed the entry — and having 
also shown, by doubling his original estimate on the Debtor side, 
that Magdalen’s easy compliance with his demand on her had not 
been thrown away on him — the captain pressed his blotting-paper 
over the wet ink, and put away the book with the air of a man who 
had done a virtuous action, and who was above boasting about it. 

“Excuse me for leaving you abruptly,” he said. “Time is of im- 
portance; I must make sure of the chaise. If Mrs. Wragge comes 
in, tell her nothing — she is not sharp enough to be trusted. If she 
presumes to ask questions, extinguish her immediately. You have 
only to be loud. Pray take my authority into your own hands, and 
be as loud with Mrs. Wragge as I am !” He snatched up his tall 
hat, bowed, smiled, and tripped out of the room. 

Sensible of little else but of the relief of being alone ; feeling 
no more distinct impression than the vague sense of some serious 
change having taken place in herself and her position, Magdalen let 
the events of the morning come and go like shadows on her mind, 
and waited wearily for what the day might bring forth. After the 
lapse of some time, the door opened softly. The giant figure of 
Mrs. Wragge stalked into the room, and stopped opposite Magdalen 
in solemn astonishment. 

“Where are your Things?” asked Mrs. Wragge, with a burst of 
incontrollable anxiety. “ I’ve been up stairs looking in your 
drawers. Where are your night-gowns and night-caps ? and your 
petticoats and stockings ? and your hair-pins and bear’s grease, and 
all the rest of it ?” 

“ My luggage is left at the railway station,” said Magdalen. 

Mrs. Wragge’s moon-face brightened dimly. The ineradicable fe- 
male instinct of Curiosity tried to sparkle in her faded blue eyes — 
flickered piteously — and died out. 

“ How much luggage ?” she asked, confidentially. “ The cap- 
tain’s gone out. Let’s go and get it !” 

“Mrs. Wragge !” cried a terrible voice at the door. 

Por the first time in Magdalen’s experience, Mrs. Wragge was 
deaf to the customary stimulant. She actually ventured on a feeble 
remonstrance in the presence of her husband. 

“ Oh, do let her have her Things !” pleaded Mrs. Wragge. “ Oh, 
poor soul, do let her have her Things !” 


NO NAME. 


199 


The captain’s inexorable forefinger pointed to a corner of the 
room — dropped slowly as his wife retired before it — and suddenly 
stopped at the region of her shoes. 

“ Do I hear a clapping on the floor!” exclaimed Captain Wragge, 
with an expression of horror. “Yes; l do. Down at heel again ! 
The left shoe this time. Pull it up, Mrs. Wragge ! pull it up ! The 
chaise will be here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock,” he con- 
tinued, addressing Magdalen. u We can’t possibly venture on 
claiming your box. There is note-paper. Write down a list of the 
necessaries you want. I will take it myself to the shop, pay the 
bill for you, and bring back the parcel. We must sacrifice the box 
— we must, indeed.” 

While her husband was addressing Magdalen, Mrs. Wragge had 
stolen out again from her corner, and had ventured near enough 
to the captain to hear the words “ shop ” and “ parcel.” She clap- 
ped her great hands together in ungovernable excitement, and lost 
all control over herself immediately. 

“ Oh, if it’s shopping, let me do it !” cried Mrs. Wragge. “ She’s 
going out to buy her Things ! Oh, let me go with her — please let 
me go with her !” 

“ Sit down !” shouted the captain. “ Straight ! more to the right 
— more still. Stop where you are !” 

Mrs. Wragge crossed her helpless hands on her lap, and melted 
meekly into tears. 

“ I do so like shopping,” pleaded the poor creature ; “ and I get 
so little of it now !” 

Magdalen completed her list; and Captain Wragge at once left 
the room with it. “ Don’t let my wife bore you,” he said, pleasantly, 
as he went out. “ Cut her short, poor soul — cut her short !” 

“Don’t cry,” said Magdalen, trying to comfort Mrs. Wragge by 
patting her on the shoulder. “ When the parcel comes back you 
shall open it.” 

“ Thank you, my dear,” said Mrs. Wragge, meekly, drying her 
eyes ; “ thank you kindly. Don’t notice my handkerchief, please. 
It’s such a very little one ! I had a nice lot of them once, with lace 
borders. They’re all gone now. Never mind ! It will comfort me 
to unpack your Things. You’re very good to me. I like you. I 
say — you won’t be angry, will you ? Give us a kiss.” 

Magdalen stooped over her with the frank grace and gentleness 
of past days, and touched her faded cheek. “ Let me do something 
harmless !” she thought, with a pang at her heart — “ oh let me do 
something innocent and kind, for the sake of old times !” 

She felt her eyes moistening, and silently turned away. 

That night no rest came to her. That night the roused forces of 
Good and Evil fought their terrible fight for her soul — ^nd left tjie 


200 


NO NAME. 


strife between them still in suspense when morning came. As the 
clock of York Minster struck nine, she followed Mrs. Wragge to 
the chaise, and took her seat by the captain’s side. In a quarter of 
an hour more York was in the distance, and the high-road lay bright 
and open before them in the morning sunlight. 

THE END OF THE SECOND SCENE. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

CHRONICLE OF EVENTS: PRESERVED IN CAPTAIN WRAGGE’S 
DISPATCH-BOX. 

I. 

Chronicle for October , 1846. 

I have retired into the bosom of my family. We are residing in 
the secluded village of Ruswarp, on the banks of the Esk, about two 
miles inland from Whitby. Our lodgings are comfortable, and we 
possess the additional blessing of a tidy landlady. Mrs. Wragge 
and Miss Vanstone preceded me here, in accordance with the plan 
I laid down for effecting our retreat from York. On the next day 
I followed them alone, with the luggage. On leaving the terminus, 
I had the satisfaction of seeing the lawyer’s clerk in close confabu- 
lation with the detective officer whose advent I had prophesied. I 
left him in peaceable possession of the city of York, and the whole 
surrounding neighborhood. He has returned the compliment, and 
has left us in peaceable possession of the valley of the Esk, thirty 
miles away from him. 

Remarkable results have followed my first efforts at the cultiva- 
tion of Miss Vanstone’s dramatic abilities. 

I have discovered that she possesses extraordinary talent as a 
mimic. She has the flexible face, the manageable voice, and the 
dramatic knack which fit a woman for character-parts and disguises 
on the stage. All she now wants is teaching and practice, to make 
her sure of her own resources. The experience of her, thus gained, 
has revived an idea in my mind which originally occurred to me 
at one of the u At Homes” of the late inimitable Charles Mathews, 
comedian. I was in the Wine Trade at the time, I remember. We 
imitated the Vintage - processes of Nature in a back -kitchen at 
Brompton, and produced a dinner-sherry, pale and curious, tonic 
in character, round in the mouth, a favorite with the Court of Spain, 
at nineteen-and-sixpence a dozen, bottles included — Vide Prospectus 


NO NAME. 


201 


of the period. The profits of myself and partners were small ; we 
were in advance of the tastes of the age, and in debt to the bottle 
merchant. Being at my wits’ end for want of money, and seeing 
what audiences Mathews drew, the idea occurred to me of starting 
an imitation of the great Imitator himself, in the shape of an “At 
Home,” given by a woman. The one trifling obstacle in the way 
was the difficulty of finding the woman. From that time to this, 
I have hitherto failed to overcome it. I have conquered it at last : 
I have found the woman now. Miss Yanstone possesses youth and 
beauty as well as talent. Train her in the art of dramatic disguise ; 
provide her with appropriate dresses for different characters; de- 
velop her accomplishments in singing and playing ; give her plenty 
of smart talk addressed to the audience ; advertise her as a Young 
Lady at Home; astonish the public by a dramatic entertainment 
which depends from first to last on that young lady’s own sole ex- 
ertions; commit the entire management of the thing to my care — 
and what follows as a necessary consequence? Fame for my fair 
relative, and a fortune for myself. 

I put these considerations, as frankly as usual, to Miss Yanstone; 
offering to write the Entertainment, to manage all the business, and 
to share the profits. I did not forget to strengthen my case by in- 
forming her of the jealousies she would encounter, and the obstacles 
she would meet, if she went on the stage. And I wound up by a 
neat reference to the private inquiries which she is interested in 
making, and to the personal independence which she is desirous of 
securing before she acts on her information. “ If you go on the 
stage,” I said, “ your services will be bought by a manager, and he 
may insist on his claims just at the time when you want to get free 
from him. If, on the contrary, you adopt my views, you will be 
your own mistress and your own manager, and you can settle your 
course just as you like.” This last consideration appeared to strike 
her. She took a day to consider it ; and, when the day was over, 
gave her consent. 

I had the whole transaction down in black and white immediate- 
ly. Our arrangement is eminently satisfactory, except in one par- 
ticular. She shows a morbid distrust of writing her name at the 
bottom of any document which I present to her, and roundly de- 
clares she will sign nothing. As long as it is her interest to provide 
herself with pecuniary resources for the future, she verbally engages 
to go on. When it ceases to be her interest, she plainly threatens 
to leave off at a week’s notice. A difficult girl to deal with : she 
has found out her own value to me already. One comfort is, I have 
the cooking of the accounts ; and my fair relative shall not fill her 
pockets too suddenly if I can help it. 

My exertions in training Miss Yanstone for the coming experiment 


202 


NO NAME. 


have been varied by the writing of two anonymous letters in that 
young lady’s interests. Finding her too fidgety about arranging 
matters with her friends to pay proper attention to my instructions, 
I wrote anonymously to the lawyer who is conducting the inquiry 
after her, recommending him, in a friendly way, to give it up. The 
letter was inclosed to a friend of mine in London, with instructions 
to post it at Charing Cross. A week later I sent a second letter, 
through the same channel, requesting the lawyer to inform me, in 
writing, whether he and his clients had or had not decided on tak- 
ing my advice. I directed him, with jocose reference to the collision 
of interests between us, to address his letter : “ Tit for Tat, Post- 
office, West Strand.” 

In a few days the answer arrived — privately forwarded, of course, 
to Post-office, Whitby, by arrangement with my friend in London. 

The lawyer’s reply was short and surly : “ Sir, — If my advice had 
been followed, you and your anonymous letter would both be treat- 
ed with the contempt which they deserve. But the wishes of Miss 
Magdalen Vanstone’s eldest sister have claims on my consideration 
which I can not dispute ; and at her entreaty I inform you that all 
further proceedings on my part are withdrawn — on the express un- 
derstanding that this concession is to open facilities for written 
communication, at least, between the two sisters. A letter from the 
elder Miss Yanstone is inclosed in this. If I don’t hear in a week’s 
time that it has been received, I shall place the matter once more 
in the hands of the police. — William Pendril.” A sour man, this 
William Pendril. I can only say of him what an eminent nobleman 
once said of his sulky servant — “ I wouldn’t have such a temper as 
that fellow has got for any earthly consideration that could be of- 
fered me !” 

As a matter of course, I looked into the letter which the lawyer 
inclosed, before delivering it. Miss Vanstone, the elder, described 
herself as distracted at not hearing from her sister; as suited with 
a governess’s situation in a private family ; as going into the situa- 
tion in a week’s time ; and as longing for a letter to comfort her, 
before she faced the trial of undertaking her new duties. After 
closing the envelope again, I accompanied the delivery of the letter 
to Miss Yanstone, the younger, by a word of caution. “Are you 
more sure of your own courage now,” I said, “ than you were when 
I met you?” She was ready with her answer. “Captain Wragge, 
when you met me on the Walls of York, I had not gone too far to 
go back. I have gone too far now.” 

If she really feels this — and I think she does — her corresponding 
with her sister can do no harm. She wrote at great length the 
same day; cried profusely over her own epistolary compositicm; 
aud was remarkably ill-tempered and snappish toward me, when 


NO NAME. 


203 


we met in the evening. She wants experience, poor girl — she sadly 
wants experience of the world. How consoling to know that I am 
just the man to give it her ! 


II. 

Chronicle for November. 

We are established at Derby. The Entertainment is written; 
and the rehearsals are in steady progress. All difficulties are pro- 
vided for, but the one eternal difficulty of money. Miss Vanstone’s 
resources stretch easily enough to the limits of our personal wants ; 
including piano-forte hire for practice, and the purchase and making 
of the necessary dresses. But the expenses of starting the Enter- 
tainment are beyond the reach of any means we possess. A theatric- 
al friend of mine here, whom I had hoped to interest in our under- 
taking, proves, unhappily, to be at a crisis in his career. The field 
of human sympathy, out of which I might have raised the needful 
pecuniary crop, is closed to me from want of time to cultivate it. 
I see no other resource left — if we are to be ready by Christmas — 
than to try one of the local music-sellers in this town, who is said 
to be a speculating man. A private rehearsal at these lodgings, and 
a bargain which will fill the pockets of a grasping stranger — such 
are the sacrifices which dire necessity imposes on me at starting. 
Well ! there is only one consolation : I’ll cheat the music-seller. 

III. 

Chronicle for December. First Fortnight. 

The music-seller extorts my unwilling respect. He is one of the 
very few human beings I have met with in the course of my life 
who is not to be cheated. He has taken a masterly advantage of 
our helplessness ; and has imposed terms on us, for performances at 
Derby and Nottingham, with such a business-like disregard of all 
interests but his own, that — fond as I am of putting things down in 
black and white — I really can not prevail upon myself to record the 
bargain. It is needless to say, I have yielded with my best grace ; 
sharing with my fair relative the wretched pecuniary prospects of- 
fered to us. Our turn will come. In the mean time, I cordially re- 
gret not having known the local music-seller in early life. 

Personally speaking, I have no cause to complain of Miss Van- 
stone. We have arranged that she shall regularly forward her ad- 
dress (at the post-office) to her friends, as we move about from place 
to plaoe. Besides communicating in this way with her sister, she 
also reports herself to a certain Mr. Clare, residing in Somersetshire, 
who is to forward all letters exchanged between herself and his son. 


204 


NO NAME. 


Careful inquiry has informed me that this latter individual is now 
in China. Having suspected from the first that there was a gentle- 
man in the background, it is highly satisfactory to know that he 
recedes into the remote perspective of Asia. Long may he remain 
there ! 

The trifling responsibility of finding a name for our talented Mag- 
dalen to perform under has been cast on my shoulders. She feels 
no interest whatever in this part of the subject. “ Give me any 
name you like,” she said ; “ I have as much right to one as to an- 
other. Make it yourself.” I have readily consented to gratify her 
wishes. The resources of my commercial library include a list of 
useful names to assume ; and we can choose one at five minutes’ no- 
tice, when the admirable man of business who now oppresses us is 
ready to issue his advertisements. On this point my mind is easy 
enough : all my anxieties centre in the fair performer. I have not 
the least doubt she will do wonders if she is only left to herself on 
the first night. But if the day’s post is mischievous enough to up- 
set her by a letter from her sister, I tremble for the consequences. 


IV. 

Chronicle for December. Second Fortnight. 

My gifted relative has made her first appearance in public, and 
has laid the foundation of our future fortunes. 

On the first night, the attendance was larger than I had ventured 
to hope. The novelty of an evening's entertainment, conducted from 
beginning to end by the unaided exertions of a young lady (see ad- 
vertisement), roused the public curiosity, and the seats were moder- 
ately well filled. As good luck would have it, no letter addressed 
to Miss Vanstone came that day. She was in full possession of her- 
self until she got the first dress on and heard the bell ring for the 
music. At that critical moment she suddenly broke down. I found 
her alone in the waiting-room, sobbing, and talking like a child. 
“ Oh, poor papa ! poor papa ! Oh, my God, if he saw me now !” My 
experience in such matters at once informed me that it was a case 
of sal- volatile, accompanied by sound advice. We strung her up in 
no time to concert pitch ; set her eyes in a blaze ; and made her 
out-blush her own rouge. The curtain rose when we had got her 
at a red heat. She dashed at it exactly as she dashed at it in the 
back drawing-room at Rosemary Lane. Her personal appearance 
settled the question of her reception before she opened her lips. She 
rushed full gallop through her changes of character, her songs, and 
her dialogue; making mistakes by the dozen, and never stopping 
to set them right ; carrying the people along with her in a perfect 
whirlwind, and never waiting for the applause. The whole thing 


NO NAME. 


205 


was over twenty minutes sooner than the time we had calculated on. 
She carried it through to the end, and fainted on the waiting-room 
sofa a minute after the curtain was down. The music-seller having 
taken leave of his senses from sheer astonishment, and I having no 
evening costume to appear in, we sent the doctor to make the neces- 
sary apology to the public, who were calling for her till the place 
rang again. I prompted our medical orator with a neat speech from 
behind the curtain ; and I never heard such applause, from such a 
comparatively small audience, before in my life. I felt the tribute — 
I felt it deeply. Fourteen years ago I scraped together the wretched 
means of existence in this very town by reading the newspaper (with 
explanatory comments) to the company at a public-house. And now 
here I am at the top of the tree. 

It is needless to say that my first proceeding was to bowl out the 
music -seller on the spot. He called the next morning, no doubt 
with a liberal proposal for extending the engagement beyond Derby 
and Nottingham. My niece was described as not well enough to 
see him ; and, when he asked for me, he was told I was not up. I 
happened to be at that moment engaged in putting the case pa- 
thetically to our gifted Magdalen. Her answer was in the highest 
degree satisfactory. She would permanently engage herself to no- 
body — least of all to a man who had taken sordid advantage of her 
position and mine. She would be her own mistress, and share the 
profits with me, while she wanted money, and while it suited her to 
go on. So far so good. But the reason she added next, for her flat- 
tering preference of myself, was less to my taste. “ The music-sell- 
er is not the man whom I employ to make my inquiries,” she said. 
“You are the man.” I don’t like her steadily remembering those 
inquiries, in the first bewilderment of her success. It looks ill for 
the future ; it looks infernally ill for the future. 

Y. 

Chronicle for January , 1847. 

She has shown the cloven foot already. I begin to be a little 
afraid of her. 

On the conclusion of the Nottingham engagement (the results of 
which more than equaled the results at Derby), I proposed taking 
the entertainment next — now we had got it into our own hands — to 
Newark. Miss Yanstone raised no objection until we came to the 
question of time, when she amazed me by stipulating for a week’s 
delay before we appeared in public again. 

w For what possible purpose ?” I asked. 

“ For the purpose of making the inquiries which I mentioned to 
you at York,” she answered. 


206 


NO NAME. 


I instantly enlarged on the danger of delay, putting all the con- 
siderations before her in every imaginable form. She remained per- 
fectly immovable. I tried to shake her on the question of expenses. 
She answered by handing me over her share of the proceeds at Der- 
by and Nottingham — and there were my expenses paid, at the rate 
of nearly two guineas a day. I wonder who first picked out a mule 
as the type of obstinacy? How little knowledge that man must 
have had of women ! 

There was no help for it. I took down my instructions in black 
and white, as usual. My first exertions were to be directed to the 
discovery of Mr. Michael Yanstone’s address : I was also expected 
to find out how long he was likely to live there, and whether he had 
sold Combe-Raven or not. My next inquiries were to inform me of 
his ordinary habits of life ; of what he did with his money ; of who 
his intimate friends were ; and of the sort of terms on which his son, 
Mr. Noel Vanstone, was now living with him. Lastly, the investiga- 
tions were to end in discovering whether there was any female rel- 
ative, or any woman exercising domestic authority in the house, who 
was known to have an influence over either father or son. 

If my long practice in cultivating the field of human sympathy 
had not accustomed me to private investigations into the affairs of 
other people, I might have found some of these queries rather difli- 
cult to deal with in the course of a week. As it was, I gave myself 
all the benefit of my own experience, and brought the answers back 
to Nottingham in a day less than the given time. Here they are, 
in regular order, for convenience of future reference : 

(1.) Mr. Michael Vanstone is now residing at German Place, 
Brighton, and likely to remain there, as he finds the air suits him. 
He reached London from Switzerland in September last ; and sold 
the Combe-Raven property immediately on his arrival. 

(2.) His ordinary habits of life are secret and retired ; he seldom 
visits, or receives company. Part of his money is supposed to be in 
the funds, and part laid out in railway investments, which have sur- 
vived the panic of eighteen hundred and forty-six, and are rapidly 
rising in value. He is said to be a bold speculator. Since his ar- 
rival in England he has invested, with great judgment, in house 
property. He has some houses in remote parts of London, and 
some houses in certain watering-places on the east coast, which are 
shown to be advancing in public repute. In all these cases he is 
reported to have made remarkably good bargains. 

(3.) It is not easy to discover who his intimate friends are. Two 
names only have been ascertained. The first is Admiral Bartram ; 
supposed to have been under friendly obligations, in past years, to 
Mr. Michael Vanstone. The second is Mr. George Bartram, nephew 
of the Admiral, and now staying on a short visit in the house at 


NO NAME. 


207 


German Place. Mr. George Bartram is the son of the late Mr. An- 
drew Vanstone’s sister, also deceased. He is therefore a cousin of 
Mr. Noel Vanstone’s. This last — viz., Mr. Noel Vanstone — is in del- 
icate health, and is living on excellent terms with his father in Ger- 
man Place. 

(4.) There is no female relative in Mr. Michael Vanstone’s family 
circle. But there is a housekeeper who has lived in his service ever 
since his wife’s death, and who has acquired a strong influence over 
both father and son. She is a native of Switzerland, elderly, and 
a widow. Her name is Mrs. Lecount. 

On placing these particulars in Miss Vanstone’s hands, she made 
no remark, except to thank me. I endeavored to invite her confi- 
dence. No results ; nothing but a renewal of civility, and a sudden 
shifting to the subject of the Entertainment. Very good. If she 
won’t give me the information I want, the conclusion is obvious — 
I must help myself. 

Business considerations claim the remainder of this page. Let 
me return to business. 


Financial Statement. 


Third Week in January. 


Place Visited. 

Newark. 

Performances. 

Two. 

Net Receipts, 

In black and white. 

£25. 

Net Receipts, 

Actually Realized. 

£32 10s. 

Apparent Division of Profits. 

Miss V £12 10 

Self £12 10 

Actual Division of Profits. 

Miss V 

Self 

£12 10 
.£20 00 


Private Surplus on the Week, 
Or say. 

Self-presented Testimonial. 
£7 10s. 


Audited, 

Passed correct, 

H. Wragge. 

H. Wragge. 


The next stronghold of British sympathy which we take by storm 
is Sheffield. We open the first week in February. 


Chronicle for February. t \ : 

Practice has now given my fair relative the confidence which I 
predicted would come with time. Her knack of disguising her 
own identity in the impersonation of different characters so 'com- 
pletely staggers her audiences, that the same people come twice 
over to find out how she does it. It is the amiable defect of the 


208 


NO NAME. 


English public never to know when they have had enough of a 
good thing. They actually try to encore one of her characters — an 
old north-country lady ; modeled on that honored preceptress in 
the late Mr. Vanstone’s family to whom I presented myself at 
Combe-Raven. This particular performance fairly amazes the peo- 
ple. I don’t wonder at it. Such an extraordinary assumption of 
age by a girl of nineteen has never been seen in public before, in 
the whole course of my theatrical experience. 

I find myself writing in a lower tone than usual ; I miss my own 
dash of humor. The fact is, I am depressed about the future. In 
the very height of our prosperity, my perverse pupil sticks to her 
trumpery family quarrel. I feel myself at the mercy of the first 
whim in the Yanstone direction which may come into her head — I, 
the architect of her fortunes. Too bad ; upon my soul, too bad. 

She has acted already on the inquiries which she forced me to 
make for her. She has written two letters to Mr. Michael Yanstone. 

To the first letter no answer came. To the second a reply was 
received. Her infernal cleverness put an obstacle I had not expect- 
ed in the way of my intercepting it. Later in the day, after she had 
herself opened and read the answer, I laid another trap for her. It 
just succeeded, and no more. I had half a minute to look into the 
envelope in her absence. It contained nothing but her own letter 
returned. She is not the girl to put up quietly with such an insult 
as this. Mischief will come of it — Mischief to Michael Yanstone — 
which is of no earthly consequence : mischief to Me — which is a 
truly serious matter. 

VII. 

Chronicle for March. 

After performing at Sheffield and Manchester, we have moved to 
Liverpool, Preston, and Lancaster. Another change in this weather- 
cock of a girl. She has written no more letters to Michael Yan- 
stone ; and she has become as anxious to make money as I am my- 
self. We are realizing large profits, and we are worked to death. I 
don’t like this change in her : she has a purpose to answer, or she 
would not show such extraordinary eagerness to fill her purse. 
Nothing I can do — no cooking of accounts ; no self-presented testi- 
monials — can keep that purse empty. The success of the Enter- 
tainment, and her own sharpness in looking after her interests, 
literally force me into a course of comparative honesty. She puts 
into her pocket more than a third of the profits, in defiance of my 
most arduous exertions to prevent her. And this at my age! this 
after^y long and successful career as a moral agriculturist ! Marks 
of admiration are very little things ; but they express my feelings, 
and I put them in freely. 


NO NAME. 


209 


yin. 

Chronicle for April and May. 

We have visited seven more large towns, and are now at Binning* 
ham. Consulting my books, I find that Miss Yanstone has realized 
by the Entertainment, up to this time, the enormous sum of nearly 
four hundred pounds. It is quite possible that my own profits may 
reach one or two miserable hundreds more. But I am the architect 
of her fortunes — the publisher, so to speak, of her book — and, if 
any thing, I am underpaid. 

I made the above discovery on the twenty-ninth of the month — 
anniversary of the Restoration of my royal predecessor in the field 
of human sympathy, Charles the Second. I had barely finished 
locking up my dispatch-box, when the ungrateful girl, whose repu- 
tation I have made, came into the room and told me in so many 
words that the business connection between us was for the present 
at an end. 

I attempt no description of my own sensations : I merely record 
facts. She informed me, with an appearance of perfect composure, 
that she needed rest, and that she had “ new objects in view.” She 
might possibly want me to assist those objects; and she might pos- 
sibly return to the Entertainment. In either case it would be enough 
if we exchanged addresses, at which we could write to each other 
in case of need. Having no desire to leave me too abruptly, she 
would remain the next day (which was Sunday) ; and would take 
her departure on Monday morning. Such was her explanation, in 
so many words. 

Remonstrance, as I knew by experience, would be thrown away. 
Authority I had none to exert. My one sensible course to take in 
this emergency was to find out which way my own interests pointed, 
and to go that way without a moment’s unnecessary hesitation. 

A very little reflection has since convinced me that she has a deep- 
laid scheme against Michael Yanstone in view. She is young, hand- 
some, clever, and unscrupulous; she has made money to live on, 
and has time at her disposal to find out the weak side of an old 
man ; and she is going to attack Mr. Michael Yanstone unawares 
with the legitimate weapons of her sex. Is she likely to want me 
for such a purpose as this ? Doubtful. Is she merely anxious to 
get rid of me on easy terms ? Probable. Am I the sort of man to 
be treated in this way by my own pupil ? Decidedly not : I am the 
man to see my way through a neat succession of alternatives ; and 
here they are : 

Fir^t alternative : To announce my compliance with her proposal ; 
to exchange addresses with her ; and then to keep my eye privately 
on all her future movements. Second alternative : to express fond 


210 


NO NAME. 


anxiety in a paternal capacity ; and to threaten giving the alarm to 
her sister and the lawyer, if she persists in her design. Third alter- 
native : To turn the information I already possess to the best ac- 
count, by making it a marketable commodity between Mr. Michael 
Yanstone and myself. At present I incline toward the last of these 
three courses. But my decision is far too important to be hurried. 
To-day is only the twenty-ninth. I will suspend my Chronicle of 
Events until Monday. 

May 31s£. — My alternatives and her plans are both overthrown 
together. 

The newspaper came in, as usual, after breakfast. I looked it 
over, and discovered this memorable entry among the obituary an- 
nouncements of the day : 

“ On the 29th inst., at Brighton, Michael Yanstone, Esq., formerly 
of Zurich, aged 77.” 

Miss Yanstone was present in the room when I read those two 
startling lines. Her bonnet was on ; her boxes were packed ; she 
was waiting impatiently until it was time to go to the train. I 
handed the paper to her, without a word on my side. Without a 
word on hers, she looked where I pointed, and read the news of 
Michael Vanstone’s death. 

The paper dropped out of her hand, and she suddenly pulled 
down her veil. I caught one glance at her face before she hid it 
from me. The effect on my mind was startling in the extreme. To 
put it with my customary dash of humor — her face informed me 
that the most sensible action which Michael Yanstone, Esq., former- 
ly of Zurich, had ever achieved in his life was the action he per- 
formed at Brighton on the 29th instant. 

Finding the dead silence in the room singularly unpleasant un- 
der existing circumstances, I thought I would make a remark. My 
regard for my own interests supplied me with a subject. I men- 
tioned the Entertainment. 

“ After what has happened,” I said, “ I presume we go on with 
our performances as usual ?” 

“ No,” she answered, behind the veil. “We go on with my in- 
quiries.” 

“ Inquiries after a dead man ?” 

“ Inquiries after the dead man’s son.” 

“ Mr. Noel Yanstone ?” 

“ Yes ; Mr. Noel Yanstone.” 

Not having a veil to let down over my own face, I stooped and 
picked up the newspaper. Her devilish determination quite upset 
me for the moment. I actually had to steady myself before I could 
Hpeak to her again. 


NO NAME. 


211 


u Are the new inquiries as harmless as the old ones ?” I asked. 

“ Quite as harmless.” 

u What am I expected to find out ?” 

“ I wish to know whether Mr. Noel Vanstone remains at Brighton 
after the funeral.” 

“ And if not ?” 

“ If not, I shall want to know his new address, wherever it may be.” 

“ Yes. And what next ?” 

“ I wish you to find out next if all the father’s money goes to the 
son.” 

I began to see her drift. The word money relieved me ; I felt 
quite on my own ground again. 

“ Any thing more ?” I asked. 

“ Only one thing more,” she answered. “ Make sure, if you please, 
whether Mrs. Lecount, the housekeeper, remains or not in Mr. Noel 
Yanstone’s service.” 

Her voice altered a little as she mentioned Mrs. Lecount’s name ; 
she is evidently sharp enough to distrust the housekeeper already. 

“ My expenses are to be paid as usual ?” I said. 

“ As usual.” 

“ When am I expected to leave for Brighton ?” 

“As soon as you can.” 

She rose, and left the room. After a momentary doubt, I decided 
on executing the new commission. The more private inquiries I 
conduct for my fair relative, the harder she will find it to get rid of 
hers truly, Horatio Wragge. 

There is nothing to prevent my starting for Brighton to-morrow. 
So to-morrow I go. If Mr. Noel Vanstone succeeds to his father’s 
property, he is the only human being possessed of pecuniary bless- 
ings who fails to inspire me with a feeling of unmitigated envy. 

IX. 

Chronicle for June. 

9 th . — I returned yesterday with my information. Here it is, pri- 
vately noted down for convenience of future reference : 

Mr. Noel Vanstone has left Brighton, and has removed, for the 
purpose of transacting business in London, to one of his late father’s 
empty houses in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. This singularly mean 
selection of a place of residence on the part of a gentleman of for- 
tune looks as if Mr. N. V. and his money were not easily parted. 

Mr. Noe.l Vanstone has stepped into his father’s shoes under the 
following circumstances : Mr. Michael Vanstone appears to have 
died, curiously enough, as Mr. Andrew Vanstone died — intestate. 
With this difference, however, in the two cases, that the younger 


212 


NO NAME. 


brother left an informal will, and the elder brother left no will at 
all. The hardest men have their weaknesses ; and Mr. Michael 
Yanstone’s weakness seems to have been an insurmountable horror 
of contemplating the event of his own death. His son, his house- 
keeper, and his lawyer, had all three tried over and over again to 
get him to make a will ; and had never shaken his obstinate reso- 
lution to put off performing the only business duty he w r as ever 
known to neglect. Two doctors attended him in his last illness; 
warned him that he was too old a man to hope to get over it ; and 
warned him in vain. He announced his own positive determina- 
tion not to die. His last words in this world (as I succeeded in 
discovering from the nurse, who assisted Mrs. Lecount) were, u I’m 
getting better every minute ; send for the fly directly and take me 
out for a drive.” The same night Death proved to be the more 
obstinate of the two ; and left his son (and only child) to take the 
property in due course of law. Nobody doubts that the result 
would have been the same if a will had been made. The father 
and son had every confidence in each other, and were known to 
have always lived together on the most friendly terms. 

Mrs. Lecount remains with Mr. Noel Vanstone, in the same house- 
keeping capacity which she filled with his father, and has accom- 
panied him to the new residence in Yauxhall Walk. She is ac- 
knowledged on all hands to have been a sufferer by the turn events 
have taken. If Mr. Michael Yanstone had made his will, there is 
no doubt she would have received a handsome legacy. She is now 
left dependent on Mr. Noel Yanstone’s sense of gratitude ; and she 
is not at all likely, I should imagine, to let that sense fall asleep for 
want of a little timely jogging. Whether my fair relative’s future 
intentions in this quarter point toward Mischief or Money, is more 
than I can yet say. In either case, I venture to predict that she will 
find an awkward obstacle in Mrs. Lecount. 

So much for my information to the present date. The manner 
in which it was received by Miss Yanstone showed the most un- 
grateful distrust of me. She confided nothing to my private ear 
but the expression of her best thanks. A sharp girl — a devilish 
sharp girl. But there is such a thing as bowling a man out once 
too often; especially when the name of that man happens to be 
Wragge. 

Not a word more about the Entertainment; not a word more 
about moving from our present quarters. Yery good. My right 
hand lays my left hand a wager. Ten to one, on her opening com- 
munications with the son as she opened them with the father. Ten 
to one, on her writing to Noel Yanstone before the month is out. 

21 et . — She has written by to-day’s post. A long letter, apparently 


NO NAME. 


213 


— for she put two stamps on the envelope. (Private memorandum, 
addressed to myself. Wait for the answer.) 

22 d, 23 d, 24:th. — (Private memorandum continued. Wait for the 
answer.) 

25th. — The answer has come. As an ex -military man, I have 
naturally employed stratagem to get at it. The success which re- 
wards all genuine perseverance has rewarded me — and I have got 
at it accordingly. 

The letter is written, not by Mr. Noel Vanstone, but by Mrs. Le- 
count. She takes the highest moral ground, in a tone of spiteful 
politeness. Mr. Noel Vanstone’s delicate health and recent bereave- 
ment prevent him from writing himself. Any more letters from 
Miss Vanstone will be returned unopened. Any personal applica- 
tion will produce an immediate appeal to the protection of the law. 
Mr. Noel Vanstone, having been expressly cautioned against Miss 
Magdalen Vanstone by his late lamented father, has not yet forgot- 
ten his father’s advice. Considers it a reflection cast on the memory 
of the best of men, to suppose that his course of action toward the 
Miss Vanstones can be other than the course of action which his fa- 
ther pursued. This is what he has himself instructed Mrs. Lecount 
to say. She has endeavored to express herself in the most concilia- 
tory language she could select ; she has tried to avoid giving unnec- 
essary pain, by addressing Miss Vanstone (as a matter of courtesy) by 
the family name ; and she trusts these concessions, which speak for 
themselves, will not be thrown away. — Such is the substance of the 
letter, and so it ends. 

I draw two conclusions from this little document. First — that it 
will lead to serious results. Secondly — that Mrs. Lecount, with all 
her politeness, is a dangerous woman to deal with. I wish I saw 
my way safe before me. 1 don’t see it yet. 

29th. — Miss Vanstone has abandoned my protection; and the 
whole lucrative future of the dramatic entertainment has abandoned 
me with her. I am swindled — I, the last man under Heaven who 
could possibly have expected to write in those disgraceful terms of 
himself — I am swindled ! 

Let me chronicle the events. They exhibit me, for the time being, 
in a sadly helpless point of view. But the nature of the man pre- 
vails : I must have the events down in black and white. 

The announcement of her approaching departure was intimated 
to me yesterday. After another civil speech about the information 
I had procured at Brighton, she hinted that there was a necessity 
for pushing our inquiries a little further. I immediately offered to 
undertake them, as before. “ No,” she said ; “ they are not in your 
way this time. They are inquiries relating to a woman ; and I mean 


214 


NO NAME. 


to make them myself !” Feeling privately convinced that this new 
resolution pointed straight at Mrs. Lecount, I tried a few innocent 
questions on the subject. She quietly declined to answer them. I 
asked next when she proposed to leave. She would leave on the 
twenty-eighth. For what destination ? London. For long ? Prob- 
ably not. By herself? No. With me ? No. With whom then ? 
With Mrs. Wragge, if I had no objection. Good heavens ! for what 
possible purpose ? For the purpose of getting a respectable lodging, 
which she could hardly expect to accomplish unless she was accom- 
panied by an elderly female friend. And was I, in the capacity of 
elderly male friend, to be left out of the business altogether ? Im- 
possible to say at present. Was I not even to forward any letters 
which might come for her at our present address ? No : she would 
make the arrangement herself at the post-office ; and she would ask 
me, at the same time, for an address, at which I could receive a let- 
ter from her, in case of necessity for future communication. Further 
inquiries, after this last answer, could lead to nothing but waste of 
time. I saved time by putting no more questions. 

It was clear to me that our present position toward each other 
was what our position had been previously to the event of Michael 
Vanstone’s death. I returned, as before, to my choice of alternatives. 
Which way did my private interests point ? Toward trusting the 
chance of her wanting me again ? Toward threatening her with the 
interference of her relatives and friends ? Or toward making the in- 
formation which I possessed a marketable commodity between the 
wealthy branch of the family and myself? The last of the three was 
the alternative I had chosen in the case of the father. I chose it 
once more in the case of the son. 

The train started for London nearly four hours since, and took her 
away in it, accompanied by Mrs. Wragge. 

My wife is too great a fool, poor soul, to be actively valuable in 
the present emergency ; but she will be passively useful in keeping 
up Miss Vanstone’s connection with me — and, in consideration of 
that circumstance, I consent to brush my own trowsers, shave my 
own chin, and submit to the other inconveniences of waiting on my- 
self for a limited period. Any faint glimmerings of sense which 
Mrs. Wragge may have formerly possessed appear to have now final- 
ly taken their leave of her. On receiving permission to go to Lon- 
don, she favored us immediately with two inquiries. Might she do 
some shopping ? and might she leave the cookery-book behind her ? 
Miss Vanstone said Yes to one question, and I said Yes to the other 
— and from that moment, Mrs. Wragge has existed in a state of per- 
petual laughter. I am still hoarse with vainly-repeated applications 
of vocal stimulant ; and I left her in the railway carriage, to my in' 
expressible disgust, with "both shoes down at heel. 


NO NAME. 


215 


Under ordinary circumstances, these absurd particulars would not 
have dwelt on my memory. But, as matters actually stand, my un- 
fortunate wife’s imbecility may, in her present position, lead to con- 
sequences which we none of us foresee. She is nothing more or less 
than a grown-up child ; and I can plainly detect that Miss Vanstone 
trusts her, as she would not have trusted a sharper woman, on that 
very account. I know children, little and big, rather better than 
my fair relative does ; and I say — beware of all forms of human 
innocence, when it happens to be your interest to keep a secret to 
yourself. 

Let me return to business. Here I am, at two o’clock on a fine 
summer’s afternoon, left entirely alone, to consider the safest means 
of approaching Mr. Noel Vanstone on my own account. My private 
suspicions of his miserly character produce no discouraging effect on 
me. I have extracted cheering pecuniary results in my time from 
people quite as fond of their money as he can be. The real difficul- 
ty to contend with is the obstacle of Mrs. Lecount. If I am not mis- 
taken, this lady merits a little serious consideration on my part. I 
will close my chronicle for to-day, and give Mrs. Lecount her due. 

Three o'clock . — I open these pages again, to record a discovery 
which has taken me entirely by surprise. 

After completing the last entry, a circumstance revived in my 
memory which I had noticed on escorting the ladies this morning 
to the railway. I then remarked that Miss Vanstone had only taken 
one of her three boxes with her — and it now occurred to me that a 
private investigation of the luggage she had left behind might pos- 
sibly be attended with beneficial results. Having, at certain periods 
of my life, been in the habit of cultivating friendly terms with strange 
locks, I found no difficulty in establishing myself on a familiar foot- 
ing with Miss Vanstone’s boxes. One of the two presented nothing 
to interest me. The other — devoted to the preservation of the cos- 
tumes, articles of toilet, and other properties used in the dramatic 
Entertainment — proved to be better worth examining : for it led me 
straight to the discovery of one of its owner’s secrets. 

I found all the dresses in the box complete — with one remarkable 
exception. That exception was the dress of the old north-country 
lady ; the character which I have already mentioned as the best of 
all my pupil’s disguises, and as modeled in voice and manner on her 
old governess, Miss Garth. The wig ; the eyebrows ; the bonnet and 
veil ; the cloak, padded inside to disfigure her back and shoulders ; 
the paints and cosmetics used to age her face and alter her complex- 
ion — were all gone. Nothing but the gown remained; a gaudily- 
flowered silk, useful enough for dramatic purposes, but too extrava- 
gant in color and pattern to bear inspection by daylight. The oth- 
er parts of the dress are sufficiently quiet to pass muster ; the bon- 


216 


NO NAME. 


net and veil are only old-fashioned, and the cloak is of a sober gray 
color. But one plain inference can be drawn from such a discovery 
as this. As certainly as I sit here, she is going to open the campaign 
against Noel Yanstone and Mrs. Lecount in a character which nei- 
ther of those two persons can have any possible reason for suspecting 
at the outset — the character of Miss Garth. 

What course am I to take under these circumstances? Having 
got her secret, what am I to do with it ? These are awkward con- 
siderations; I am rather puzzled how to deal with them. 

It is something more than the mere fact of her choosing to dis- 
guise herself to forward her own private ends, that causes my pres- 
ent perplexity. Hundreds of girls take fancies for disguising them- 
selves ; and hundreds of instances of it are related year after year in 
the public journals. But my ex -pupil is not to be confounded for 
one moment with the average adventuress of the newspapers. She 
is capable of going a long way beyond the limit of dressing herself 
like a man, and imitating a man’s voice and manner. She has a nat- 
ural gift for assuming characters which I have never seen equaled 
by a woman ; and she has performed in public until she has felt her 
own power, and trained her talent for disguising herself to the high- 
est pitch. A girl who takes the sharpest people unawares by using 
such a capacity as this to help her own objects in private life, and 
who sharpens that capacity by a determination to fight her way to 
her own purpose, which has beaten down every thing before it, up to 
this time — is a girl who tries an experiment in deception, new enough 
and dangerous enough to lead, one way or the other, to very serious 
results. This is my conviction, founded on a large experience in the 
art of imposing on my fellow-creatures. I say of my fair relative’s 
enterprise what I never said or thought of it till I introduced my- 
self to the inside of her box. The chances for and against her win- 
ning the fight for her lost fortune are now so evenly balanced, that 
I can not for the life of me see on which side the scale inclines. All 
I can discern is, that it will, to a dead certainty, turn one way or the 
other, on the day when she passes Noel Yanstone’s doors in disguise. 

Which way do my interests point now ? Upon my honor, I don’t 
know. 

Five o’clock . — I have effected a masterly compromise ; I have de- 
cided on turning myself into a Jack-on-both-sides. 

By to-day’s post I have dispatched to London an anonymous let- 
ter for Mr. Noel Yanstone. It will be forwarded to its destination 
by the same means which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr. 
Pendril; and it will reach Yauxhall Walk, Lambeth, by the after- 
noon of to-morrow at the latest. 

The letter is short, and to the purpose. It warns Mr. Noel Van- 


NO NAME. 


217 


stone, in the most alarming language, that he is destined to become 
the victim of a conspiracy; and that the prime mover of it is a 
young lady who has already held written communication with his 
father and himself. It offers him the information necessary to se- 
cure his own safety, on condition that he makes it worth the writer’s 
while to run the serious personal risk which such a disclosure will 
entail on him. And it ends by stipulating that the answer shall 
be advertised in the Times ; shall be addressed to “ An Unknown 
Friend;” and shall state plainly what remuneration Mr. Noel Van- 
stone offers for the priceless service which it is proposed to render 
him. 

Unless some unexpected complication occurs, this letter places 
me exactly in the position which it is my present interest to occu- 
py. If the advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered 
is large enough to justify me in going over to the camp of the ene- 
my, over I go. If no advertisement appears, or if Mr. Noel Van- 
stone rates my invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I re- 
main, biding my time till my fair relative wants me, or till I make 
her want me, which comes to the same thing. If the anonymous 
letter falls by any accident into her hands, she will find disparaging 
allusions in it to myself, purposely introduced to suggest that the 
writer must be one of the persons whom I addressed while conduct- 
ing her inquiries. If Mrs. Lecount takes the business in hand, and 
lays a trap for me — I decline her tempting invitation by becoming 
totally ignorant of the whole affair the instant any second person 
appears in it. Let the end come as it may, here I am ready to profit 
by it : here I am, facing both ways, with perfect ease and security 
— a moral agriculturist, with his eye on two crops at once, and his 
swindler’s sickle ready for any emergency. 

For the next week to come, the newspaper will be more interest- 
ing to me than ever. I wonder which side I shall eventually be- 
long to ? 


218 


NO NAME. 


THE THIRD SCENE. 

VAUXHALL WALK, LAMBETH. 


CHAPTER I. 

The old Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, on the southern bank 
of the Thames — with its Bishop’s Walk and Garden, and its terrace 
fronting the river — is an architectural relic of the London of former 
times, precious to all lovers of the picturesque, in the utilitarian 
London of the present day. Southward of this venerable structure 
lies the street labyrinth of Lambeth ; and nearly midway, in that 
part of the maze of houses which is placed nearest to the river, runs 
the dingy double row of buildings now, as in former days, known 
by the name of Yauxhall Walk. 

The net-work of dismal streets stretching over the surrounding 
neighborhood contains a population for the most part of the poorer 
order. In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid strug- 
gle with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement ; 
gathers its forces through the week ; and, strengthening to a tu- 
mult on Saturday night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky 
gas-light. Miserable women, whose faces never smile, haunt the 
butchers’ shops in such London localities as these, with relics of 
the men’s wages saved from the public-house clutched fast in their 
hands, with eyes that devour the meat they dare not buy, with 
eager fingers that touch it covetously, as the fingers of their richer 
sisters touch a precious stone. In this district, as in other districts 
remote from the wealthy quarters of the metropolis, the hideous 
London vagabond — with the filth of the street outmatched in his 
speech, with the mud of the street outdirtied in his clothes — lounges, 
lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the gin-shop door ; the 
public disgrace of his country, the unheeded warning of social trou- 
bles that are yet to come. Here, the loud self-assertion of Modern 
Progress — which has reformed so much in manners, and altered so 
little in men — meets the flat contradiction that scatters its preten- 
sions to the winds. Here, while the national prosperity feasts, like 
another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is the 
Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his 
glory is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting. 

Situated in such a neighborhood as this, Yauxhall Walk gains 


NO NAME. 


219 


by comparison, and establishes claims to respectability which no im- 
partial observation can fail to recognize. A large proportion of the 
Walk is still composed of private houses. In the scattered situ- 
ations where shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the 
crowds of more populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbu- 
lent, nor is the public consumer besieged by loud invitations to 
“ buy.” Bird-fanciers have sought the congenial tranquillity of the 
scene ; and pigeons coo, and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. 
Second-hand carts and cabs, bedsteads of a certain age, detached 
carriage-wheels for those who may want one to make up a set, are 
all to be found here in the same repository. One tributary stream, 
in the great flood of gas which illuminates London, tracks its par- 
ent source to Works established in this locality. Here the follow- 
ers of John Wesley have set up a temple, built before the period 
of Methodist conversion to the principles of architectural religion. 
And here — most striking object of all — on the site where thousands 
of lights once sparkled ; where sweet sounds of music made night 
tuneful till morning dawned ; where the beauty and fashion of Lon- 
don feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a century — 
spreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish ; the 
deserted dead body of Yauxhall Gardens moldering in the open air. 

On the same day when Captain Wragge completed the last entry 
in his Chronicle of Events, a woman appeared at the window of 
one of the houses in Yauxhall Walk, and removed from the glass a 
printed paper which had been wafered to it announcing that Apart- 
ments were to be let. The apartments consisted of two rooms on 
the first floor. They had just been taken for a week certain by 
two ladies who had paid in advance — those two ladies being Mag- 
dalen and Mrs. Wragge. 

As soon as the mistress of the house had left the room, Magdalen 
walked to the window, and cautiously looked out from it at the 
row of buildings opposite. They were of superior pretensions in 
size and appearance to the other houses in the Walk: the date at 
which they had been erected was inscribed on one of them, and was 
stated to be the year 1759. They stood back from the pavement, 
separated from it by little strips of garden-ground. This peculiari- 
ty of position, added to the breadth of the roadway interposing be- 
tween them and the smaller houses opposite, made it impossible for 
Magdalen to see the numbers on the doors, or to observe more of 
any one who might come to the windows than the bare general out- 
line of dress and figure. Nevertheless, there she stood, anxiously 
fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly opposite to her — the 
house she had looked for before entering the lodgings ; the house 
inhabited at that moment by Noel Yanstone and Mrs. Lecount. 


220 


NO NAME. 


After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or 
more, she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect 
which her behavior might have produced on her traveling companion. 

Not the slightest cause appeared for any apprehension in that 
quarter. Mrs. Wragge was seated at the table absorbed in the ar- 
rangement of a series of smart circulars and tempting price-lists, is- 
sued by advertising trades-people, and flung in at the cab-windows 
as they left the London terminus. “ I’ve often heard tell of light 
reading,” said Mrs. Wragge, restlessly shifting the positions of the 
circulars as a child restlessly shifts the position of a new set of 
toys. “ Here’s light reading, printed in pretty colors. Here’s all 
the Things I’m going to buy when I’m out shopping to-morrow. 
Lend us a pencil, please — you won’t be angry, will you ? — I do so 
want to mark ’em off.” She looked up at Magdalen, chuckled joy- 
fully over her own altered circumstances, and beat her great hands 
on the table in irrepressible delight. “No cookery-book !” cried 
Mrs. Wragge. “No Buzzing in my head ! no captain to shave to- 
morrow ! I’m all down at heel ; my cap’s on one side ; and nobody 
bawls at me. My heart alive, here is a holiday and no mistake !” 
Her hands began to drum on the table louder than ever, until Mag- 
dalen quieted them by presenting her with a pencil. Mrs. Wragge 
instantly recovered her dignity, squared her elbows on the table, 
and plunged into imaginary shopping for the rest of the evening. 

Magdalen returned to the window. She took a chair, seated her- 
self behind the curtain, and steadily fixed her eyes once more on the 
house opposite. 

The blinds were down over the windows of the first floor and the 
second. The window of the room on the ground-floor was uncov- 
ered and partly open, but no living creature came near it. Doors 
opened, and people came and went, in the houses on either side; 
children by the dozen poured out on the pavement to play, and in- 
vaded the little strips of garden-ground to recover lost balls and 
shuttlecocks ; streams of people passed backward and forward per- 
petually ; heavy wagons piled high with goods lumbered along the 
road on their way to, or their way from, the railway station near; 
all the daily life of the district stirred with its ceaseless activity 
in every direction but one. The hours passed — and there was the 
house opposite still shut up, still void of any signs of human exist- 
ence inside or out. The one object which had decided Magdalen 
on personally venturing herself in Vauxhall Walk — the object of 
studying the looks, manners, and habits of Mrs. Lecount and her 
master from a post of observation known only to herself — was thus 
far utterly defeated. After three hours’ watching at the window, 
she had not even discovered enough to show her that the house 
was inhabited at all. 





NO NAME. 


223 


Shortly after six o’clock, the landlady disturbed Mrs. Wragge’s 
studies by spreading the cloth for dinner. Magdalen placed herself 
at the table in a position which still enabled her to command the 
view from the window. Nothing happened. The dinner came to an 
end ; Mrs. Wragge (lulled by the narcotic influences of annotating 
circulars, and eating and drinking with an appetite sharpened by 
the captain’s absence) withdrew to an arm-chair, and fell asleep in 
an attitude which would have caused her husband the acutest men- 
tal suffering ; seven o’clock struck ; the shadows of the summer 
evening lengthened stealthily on the gray pavement and the brown 
house-walls — and still the closed door opposite remained shut ; still 
the one window open showed nothing but the black blank of the 
room inside, lifeless and changeless as if that room had been a tomb. 

Mrs. Wragge’s meek snoring deepened in tone ; the evening wore 
on drearily ; it was close on eight o’clock — when an event happen- 
ed at last. The street door opposite opened for the first time, and 
a woman appeared on the threshold. 

Was the woman Mrs. Lecount ? No. As she came nearer, her 
dress showed her to be a servant. She had a large door-key in her 
hand, and was evidently going out to perform an errand. Roused 
partly by curiosity, partly by the impulse of the moment, which 
urged her impetuous nature into action after the passive endurance 
of many hours past, Magdalen snatched up her bonnet, and deter- 
mined to follow the servant to her destination, wherever it might be. 

The woman led her to the great thoroughfare of shops close at 
hand, called Lambeth Walk. After proceeding some little distance, 
and looking about her with the hesitation of a person not well ac- 
quainted with the neighborhood, the servant crossed the road and 
entered a stationer’s shop. Magdalen crossed the road after her and 
followed her in. 

The inevitable delay in entering the shop under these circum- 
stances made Magdalen too late to hear what the woman asked for. 
The first words spoken, however, by the man behind the counter 
reached her ears, and informed her that the servant’s object was to 
buy a railway guide. 

“ Do you mean a Guide for this month, or a Guide for July ?” 
asked the shopman, addressing his customer. 

“Master didn’t tell me which,” answered the woman. “All I 
know is, he’s going into the country the day after to-morrow.” 

“ The day after to-morrow is the first of July,” said the shopman. 
“ The Guide your master wants is the Guide for the new month. It 
won’t be published till to-morrow.” 

Engaging to call again on the next day, the servant left the shop, 
and took the way that led back to Yauxhall Walk. 

Magdalen purchased the first trifle she saw on the counter, and 


224 


NO NAME. 


hastily returned in the same direction. The discovery she had just 
made was of very serious importance to her ; and she felt the neces- 
sity of acting on it with as little delay as possible. 

On entering the front room at the lodgings, she found Mrs. 
Wragge just awake, lost in drowsy bewilderment, with her cap fall- 
en off on her shoulders, and with one of her shoes missing altogether. 
Magdalen endeavored to persuade her that she was tired after her 
journey, and that her wisest proceeding would be to go to bed. 
Mrs. W ragge was perfectly willing to profit by this suggestion, pro- 
vided she could find her shoe first. In looking for the shoe, she 
unfortunately discovered the circulars, put by on a side-table, and 
forthwith recovered her recollection of the earlier proceedings of 
the evening. 

“ Give us the pencil,” said Mrs. Wragge, shuffling the circulars in 
a violent hurry. “ I can’t go to bed yet — I haven't half done mark- 
ing down the things I want. Let’s see; where did I leave off? 
Try Finch's feeding-bottle for Infants. No ! there’s a cross against 
that : the cross means I don’t want it. Comfort in the Field. Buck- 
ler's Indestructible Hunting-breeches. Oh dear, dear ! I’ve lost the 
place. No, I haven’t. Here it is ; here’s my mark against it. Ele- 
gant Cashmere Robes ; strictly Oriental , very grand ; reduced to one 
pound nineteen - and - sixpence. Be in time. Only three left. Only 
three ! Oh, do lend us the money, and let’s go and get one !” 

u Not to-night,” said Magdalen. “ Suppose you go to bed now, 
and finish the circulars to-morrow ? I will put them by the bedside 
for you, and you can go on with them as soon as you wake the first 
thing in the morning.” 

This suggestion met with Mrs. Wragge’s immediate approval. 
Magdalen took her into the next room and put her to bed like a 
child — with her toys by her side. The room was so narrow, and 
the bed was so small ; and Mrs. Wragge, arrayed in the white ap- 
parel proper for the occasion, with her moon-face framed round by 
a spacious halo of night-cap, looked so hugely and disproportion- 
ately large, that Magdalen, anxious as she was, could not repress a 
smile on taking leave of her traveling companion for the night. 

“ Aha !” cried Mrs. Wragge, cheerfully; “ we’ll have that Cashmere 
Robe to-morrow. Come here ! I want to whisper something to you. 
Just you look at me — I’m going to sleep crooked, and the captain’s 
not here to bawl at me !” 

The front room at the lodgings contained a sofa-bedstead which 
the landlady arranged betimes for the night. This done, and the 
candles brought in, Magdalen was left alone to shape the future 
course as her own thoughts counseled her. 

The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that 


NO NAME. 


225 


evening at the stationer’s shop led plainly to the conclusion that 
one day more would bring Noel Yanstone’s present term of resi- 
dence in Vauxhall Walk to an end. Her first cautious resolution to 
pass many days together in unsuspected observation of the house 
opposite before she ventured herself inside was entirely frustrated 
by the turn events had taken. She was placed in the dilemma of 
running all risks headlong on the next day, or of pausing for a fu- 
ture opportunity which might never occur. There was no middle 
course open to her. Until she had seen Noel Vanstone with her 
own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to fear from Mrs. 
Lecount — until she had achieved this double object, with the need- 
ful precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the dark — 
not a step could she advance toward the accomplishment of the 
purpose which had brought her to London. 

One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one 
after another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her 
mind — and still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and 
doubted, with a hesitation new to her in her experience of herself. 
At last she crossed the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief 
of unlocking her trunk and taking from it the few things that she 
wanted for the night. Captain Wragge’s suspicions had not misled 
him. There, hidden between two dresses, were the articles of cos- 
tume which he had missed from her box at Birmingham. She turn- 
ed them over one by one, to satisfy herself that nothing she wanted 
had been forgotten, and returned once more to her post of observa- 
tion by the window. 

The house opposite was dark down to the parlor. There the 
blind, previously raised, was now drawn over the window : the 
light burning behind it showed her for the first time that the room 
w T as inhabited. Her eyes brightened, and her color rose as she 
looked at it. 

u There he is !” she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper. 
u There he lives on our money, in the house that his father’s warn- 
ing has closed against me !” She dropped the blind which she had 
raised to look out, returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray 
wig which was part of her dramatic costume in the character of the 
North-country lady. The wig had been crumpled in packing ; she 
put it on, and went to the toilet-table to comb it out. “ His father 
has warned him against Magdalen Vanstone,” she said, repeating 
the passage in Mrs. Lecount’s letter, and laughing bitterly, as she 
looked at herself in the glass. “ I wonder whether his father has 
warned him against Miss Garth ? To-morrow is sooner than I bar- 
gained for. No matter : to-morrow shall show.” 


226 


NO NAME. 


CHAPTER II. 

The early morning, when Magdalen rose and looked out, was 
cloudy and overcast. But as time advanced to the breakfast hour, 
the threatening of rain passed away ; and she was free to provide, 
without liinderance from the weather, for the first necessity of the 
day — the necessity of securing the absence of her traveling compan- 
ion from the house. 

Mrs. Wragge was dressed, armed at all points with her collection 
of circulars, and eager to be away by ten o’clock. At an earlier 
hour Magdalen had provided for her being properly taken care of 
by the landlady’s eldest daughter — a quiet, well-conducted girl, 
whose interest in the shopping expedition was readily secured by 
a little present of money for the purchase, on her own account, of 
a parasol and a muslin dress. Shortly after ten o’clock Magdalen 
dismissed Mrs. Wragge and her attendant in a cab. She then join- 
ed the landlady — who was occupied in setting the rooms in order 
up stairs — with the object of ascertaining, by a little well-timed gos- 
sip, what the daily habits might be of the inmates of the house. 

She discovered that there were no other lodgers but Mrs. Wragge 
and herself. The landlady’s husband was away all day, employed 
at a railway station. Her second daughter was charged with the 
care of the kitchen in the elder sister’s absence. The younger chil- 
dren were at school, and would be back at one o’clock to dinner. 
The landlady herself “ got up fine linen for ladies,” and expected to 
be occupied over her work all that morning in a little room built 
out at the back of the premises. Thus there was every facility for 
Magdalen’s leaving the house in disguise, and leaving it unobserved, 
provided she went out before the children came back to dinner at 
one o’clock. 

By eleven o’clock the apartments were set in order, and the land- 
lady had retired to pursue her own employments. Magdalen softly 
locked the door of her room, drew the blind over the window, and 
entered at once on her preparations for the perilous experiment of 
the day. 

The same quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficul- 
ties to be overcome, which had warned her to leave the extravagant 
part of her character costume in the box at Birmingham, now kept 
her mind fully alive to the vast difference between a disguise worn 
by gas-light for the amusement of an audience, and a disguise 


227 


NO NAME. 

sumed by daylight to deceive the searching eyes of two strangers. 
The first article of dress which she put on was an old gown of her 
own (made of the material called “alpaca”), of a dark-brown color, 
with a neat pattern of little star-shaped spots in white. A double 
flounce running round the bottom of this dress was the only milliner’s 
ornament which it presented — an ornament not at all out of charac- 
ter with the costume appropriated to an elderly lady. The disguise 
of her head and face was the next object of her attention. She fitted 
and arranged the gray wig with the dexterity which constant prac- 
tice had given her ; fixed the false eyebrows (made rather large, and 
of hair darker than the wig) carefully in their position with the gum 
she had with her for the purpose, and stained her face with the cus- 
tomary stage materials, so as to change the transparent fairness of 
her complexion to the dull, faintly opaque color of a woman in ill 
health. The lines and markings of age followed next ; and here the 
first obstacles presented themselves. The art which succeeded by 
gas-light failed by day : the difficulty of hiding the plainly artificial 
nature of the marks was almost insuperable. She turned to her 
trunk ; took from it two veils ; and putting on her old-fashioned 
bonnet, tried the effect of them in succession. One of the veils (of 
black lace) was too thick to be worn over the face at that summer 
season without exciting remark. The other, of plain net, allowed 
her features to be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to per- 
mit the safe introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was 
accustomed to use in performing the character) on the forehead and 
at the sides of the mouth. But the obstacle thus set aside only 
opened the way to a new difficulty — the difficulty of keeping her 
veil down while she was speaking to other persons, without any ob- 
vious reason for doing so. An instant’s consideration, and a chance 
look at her little china pallette of stage colors, suggested to her 
ready invention the production of a visible excuse for wearing her 
veil. She deliberately disfigured herself by artificially reddening 
the insides of her eyelids so as to produce an appearance of inflam- 
mation which no human creature but a doctor — and that doctor at 
close quarters — could have detected as false. She sprang to her 
feet, and looked triumphantly at the hideous transformation of her- 
self reflected in the glass. Who could think it strange now if she 
wore her veil down, and if she begged Mrs. Lecount’s permission to 
sit with her back to the light ? 

Her last proceeding was to put on the quiet gray cloak which 
she had brought from Birmingham, and which had been padded in- 
side by Captain Wragge’s own experienced hands, so as to hide the 
youthful grace and beauty of her back and shoulders. Her costume 
being now complete, she practiced the walk which had been origi- 
nally taught her as appropriate to the character — a walk with a 


228 


NO NAME. 


slight limp — and, returning to the glass after a minute's trial, ex- 
ercised herself next in the disguise of her voice and manner. This 
was the only part of the character in which it had been possible, 
with her physical peculiarities, to produce an imitation of Miss 
Garth ; and here the resemblance was perfect. The harsh voice, 
the blunt manner, the habit of accompanying certain phrases by an 
emphatic nod of the head, the Northumbrian burr expressing itself 
in every word which contained the letter “r” — all these personal 
peculiarities of the old North-country governess were reproduced 
to the life. The personal transformation thus completed was lit- 
erally what Captain Wragge had described it to be — a triumph 
in the art of self-disguise. Excepting the one case of seeing her 
face close, with a strong light on it, nobody who now looked at 
Magdalen could have suspected for an instant that she was other 
than an ailing, ill-made, unattractive woman of fifty years old at 
least. 

Before unlocking the door, she looked about he$ caretully, to 
make sure that none of her stage materials were exposed to view 
in case the landlady entered the room in her absence. The only 
forgotten object belonging to her that she discovered was a little 
packet of Norah’s letters which she had been reading overnight, 
and w T hich had been accidentally pushed under the looking-glass 
while she was engaged in dressing herself. As she took up the let- 
ters to put them a^vay, the thought struck her for the first time, 
“Would Norah know me now if we met each other in the street?” 
She looked in the glass, and smiled sadly. “ No,” she said, “ not 
even Norah.” 

She unlocked the door, after first looking at her watch. It was 
close on twelve o’clock. There was barely an hour left to try her 
desperate experiment, and to return to the lodging before the land- 
lady’s children came back from school. 

An instant’s, listening on the landing assured her that all was 
quiet in the passage below. She noiselessly descended the stairs, 
and gained the street without having met any living creature on 
her way out of the house. In another minute she had crossed the 
road, and had knocked at Noel Yanstone’s door. 

The door was opened by the same woman servant whom she had 
followed on the previous evening to the stationer’s shop. With a 
momentary tremor, which recalled the memorable first night of her 
appearance in public, Magdalen inquired (in Miss Garth’s voice, and 
with Miss Garth’s manner) for Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Mrs. Lecount has gone out, ma’am,” said the servant. 

“Is Mr. Yanstone at home ?” asked Magdalen, her resolution as' 
serting itself at once against the first obstacle that opposed it. 

“ My master is not up yet, ma’am.” 


NO NAME. 


229 


Another check ! A weaker nature would have accepted the 
warning. Magdalen’s nature rose in revolt against it. 

“ What time will Mrs. Lecount be back ?” she asked. 

“ About one o’clock, ma’am.” 

“ Say, if you please, that I will call again as soon after one o’clock 
as possible. I particularly wish to see Mrs. Lecount. My name is 
Miss Garth.” 

She turned and left the house. Going back to her own room 
was out of the question. The servant (as Magdalen knew by not 
hearing the door close) was looking after her ; and, moreover, she 
would expose herself, if she went indoors, to the risk of going out 
again exactly at the time when the landlady’s children were sure to 
be about the house. She turned mechanically to the right, walked 
on until she reached Yauxhall Bridge, and waited there, looking 
out over the river. 

The interval of unemployed time now before her was nearly an 
hour. How should she occupy it ? 

As she asked herself the question, the thought which had struck 
her when she put away the packet of Norah’s letters rose in her 
mind once more. A sudden impulse to test the miserable complete- 
ness of her disguise mixed with the higher and purer feeling at her 
heart, and strengthened her natural longing to see her sister’s face 
again, though she dare not discover herself and speak. Norah’s later 
letters had described, in the fullest details, her life as a governess — 
her hours for teaching, her hours of leisure, her hours for "walking 
out with her pupils. There was just time, if she could find a vehicle 
at once, for Magdalen to drive to the house of Norah’s employer, 
with the chance of getting there a few minutes before the hour "when 
her sister would be going out. “ One look at her will tell me more 
than a hundred letters !” With that thought in her heart, with the 
one object of following Norah on her daily walk, under protection 
of the disguise, Magdalen hastened over the bridge, and made for 
the northern bank of the river. 

So, at the turning-point of her life — so, in the interval before she 
took the irrevocable step, and passed the threshold of Noel Van- 
stone’s door — the forces of Good triumphing in the strife for her 
over the forces of Evil, turned her back on the scene of her medita- 
ted deception, and hurried her mercifully farther and farther away 
from the fatal house. 

She stopped the first empty cab that passed her ; told the driver 
to go to New Street, Spring Gardens; and promised to double his 
fare if he reached his destination by a given time. The man earned 
the money — more than earned it, as the event proved. Magdalen 
had not taken ten steps in advance along New Street, walking to- 


230 


NO NAME. 


ward St. James’s Park, before the door of a house beyond her opened, 
and a lady in mourning came out, accompanied by two little girls. 
The lady also took the direction of the Park, without turning her 
head toward Magdalen as she descended the house step. It mat- 
tered little ; Magdalen’s heart looked through her eyes, and told her 
that she saw Norah. 

She followed them into St. James’s Park, and thence (along the 
Mall) into the Green Park, venturing closer and closer as they reached 
the grass and ascended the rising ground in the direction of Hyde 
Park Corner. Her eager eyes devoured every detail in Norah’s 
dress, and detected the slightest change that had taken place in her 
figure and her bearing. She had become thinner since the autumn 
- — her head drooped a little ; she walked wearily. Her mourning 
dress, worn with the modest grace and neatness which no misfor- 
tune could take from her, was suited to her altered station; her 
black gown was made of stuff ; her black shawl and bonnet were of 
the plainest and cheapest kind. The two little girls, walking on 
either side of her, were dressed in silk. Magdalen instinctively 
hated them. 

She made a wide circuit on the grass, so as to turn gradually and 
meet her sister without exciting suspicion that the meeting was con- 
trived. Her heart beat fast ; a burning heat glowed in her as she 
thought of her false hair, her false color, her false dress, and saw the 
dear familiar face coming nearer and nearer. They passed each oth- 
er close. Norah’s dark gentle eyes looked up, with a deeper light 
in them, with a sadder beauty than of old — rested, all unconscious 
of the truth, on her sister’s face — and looked away from it again as 
from the face of a stranger. That glance of an instant struck Mag- 
dalen to the heart. She stood rooted to the ground after Norah had 
passed by. A horror of the vile disguise that concealed her; a 
yearning to burst its trammels and hide her shameful painted face 
on Norah’s bosom, took possession of her, body and soul. She turned 
and looked back. 

Norah and the two children had reached the higher ground, and 
were close to one of the gates in the iron railing which fenced the 
Park from the street. Drawn by an irresistible fascination, Magda- 
len followed them again, gained on them as they reached the gate, 
and heard the voices of the two children raised in angry dispute 
which way they wanted to walk next. She saw Norah take them 
through the gate, and then stoop and speak to them, while waiting 
for an opportunity to cross the road. They only grew the louder and 
the angrier for what she said. The youngest — a girl of eight or nine 
years old — flew into a child’s vehement passion, cried, screamed, and 
even kicked at the governess. The people in the street stopped and 
laughed ; some of them jestingly advised a little wholesome correc: 


NO NAME. 


231 


tion ; one woman asked Norah if she was the child’s mother ; anoth- 
er pitied her audibly for being the child’s governess. Before Mag- 
dalen could push her way through the crowd — before her all-mas- 
tering anxiety to help her sister had blinded her to every other con- 
sideration, and had brought her, self-betrayed, to Norah’s side — an 
open carriage passed the pavement slowly, hindered in its progress 
by the press of vehicles before it. An old lady seated inside heard 
the child’s cries, recognized Norah, and called to her immediately. 
The footman parted the crowd, and the children were put into the 
carriage. u It’s lucky I happened to pass this way,” said the old 
lady, beckoning contemptuously to Norah to take her place on the 
front seat ; “ you never could manage my daughter’s children, and 
you never will.” The footman put up the steps, the carriage drove 
on with the children and the governess, the crowd dispersed, and 
Magdalen was alone again. 

“ So be it!” she thought, bitterly. “I should only have distressed 
her. We should only have had the misery of parting to suffer again.” 

She mechanically retraced her steps ; she returned, as in a dream, 
to the open space of the Park. Arming itself treacherously with 
the strength of her love for her sister, with the vehemence of the 
indignation that she felt for her sister’s sake, the terrible tempta- 
tion of her life fastened its hold on her more firmly than ever. 
Through all the paint and disfigurement of the disguise, the fierce 
despair of that strong and passionate nature lowered, haggard and 
horrible. Norah made an object of public curiosity and amuse- 
ment ; Norah reprimanded in the open street ; Norah, the hired 
victim of an old woman’s insolence and a child’s ill-temper, and the 
same man to thank for it who had sent Frank to China ! — and that 
man’s son to thank after him ! The thought of her sister, which 
had turned her from the scene of her meditated deception, which 
had made the consciousness of her own disguise hateful to her, was 
now the thought which sanctioned that means, or any means, to 
compass her end ; the thought which set wings to her feet, and 
hurried her back nearer and nearer to the fatal house. 

She left the Park again, and found herself in the streets without 
knowing where. Once more she hailed the first cab that passed 
her, and told the man to drive to Vauxhall Walk. 

The change from walking to riding quieted her. She felt her 
attention returning to herself and her dress. The necessity of mak- 
ing sure that no accident had happened to her disguise in the in- 
terval since she had left her own room impressed itself immediately 
on her mind. She stopped the driver at the first pastry-cook’s shop 
which he passed, and there obtained the means of consulting a look- 
ing-glass before she ventured back to YauxfiaU Walk. 


232 


NO NAME. 


Her gray head-dress was disordered, and the old-fashioned bon- 
net was a little on one side. Nothing else had suffered. She set 
right the few defects in her costume, and returned to the cab. It 
was half-past one when she approached the house and knocked, 
for the second time, at Noel Vanstone’s door. The woman-servant 
opened it as before. 

“ Has Mrs. Lecount come back ?” 

“Yes, ma’am. Step this way, if you please.” 

The servant preceded Magdalen along an empty passage, and, 
leading her past an uncarpeted staircase, opened the door of a room 
at the back of the house. The room was lighted by one window 
looking out on a yard ; the walls were bare ; the boarded floor was 
uncovered. Two bedroom chairs stood against the wall, and a 
kitchen-table was placed under the window. On the table stood a 
glass tank filled with water, and ornamented in the middle by a 
miniature pyramid of rock-work interlaced with weeds. Snails 
clung to the sides of the tank ; tadpoles and tiny fish swam swiftly 
in the green water ; slippery efts and slimy frogs twined their noise- 
less way in and out of the weedy rock-work; and on top of the 
pyramid there sat solitary, cold as the stone, brown as the stone, 
motionless as the stone, a little bright-eyed toad. The art of keep- 
ing fish and reptiles as domestic pets had not at that time been 
popularized in England ; and Magdalen, on entering the room, start- 
ed back, in irrepressible astonishment and disgust, from the first 
specimen of an Aquarium that she had ever seen. 

“Don’t be alarmed,” said a woman’s voice behind her. “My 
pets hurt nobody.” 

Magdalen turned, and confronted Mrs. Lecount. She had ex- 
pected — founding her anticipations on the letter which the house- 
keeper had written to her — to see a hard, wily, ill-favored, insolent 
old woman. She found herself in the presence of a lady of mild, 
ingratiating manners, whose dress was the perfection of neatness, 
taste, and matronly simplicity, whose personal appearance was little 
less than a triumph of physical resistance to the deteriorating influ- 
ence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had struck some fifteen or sixteen 
years off her real age, and had asserted herself to be eight-and- 
thirty, there would not have been one man in a thousand, or one 
woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to believe her. 
Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more. It was 
plainly parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with 
mourning ribbons. Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white 
forehead, or her plump white cheeks. Her double chin was dim- 
pled, and her teeth were marvels of whiteness and regularity. Her 
lips might have been critically considered as too thin, if they had 
not been accustomed to make the best of their defects by means of 


NO NAME. 


233 


a pleading and persuasive smile. Her large black eyes might have 
looked fierce if they had been set in the face of another woman: 
they were mild and melting in the face of Mrs. Lecount ; they were 
tenderly interested in every thing she looked at — in Magdalen, in 
the toad on the rock-work, in the back-yard view from the window ; 
in her own plump fair hands, which she rubbed softly one over the 
other while she spoke ; in her own pretty cambric chemisette, which 
she had a habit of looking at complacently while she listened to 
others. The elegant black gown in which she mourned the mem- 
ory of Michael Yarustone was not a mere dress — it was a well-made 
compliment paid to Death. Her innocent white muslin apron was 
a little domestic poem in itself. Her jet ear-rings were so modest 
in their pretensions, that a Quaker might have looked at them and 
committed no sin. The comely plumpness of her face was matched 
by the comely plumpness of her figure ; it glided smoothly over the 
ground ; it flowed in sedate undulations when she walked. There 
are not many men who could have observed Mrs. Lecount entirely 
from the Platonic point of view — lads in their teens would have 
found her irresistible — women only could have hardened their hearts 
against her, and mercilessly forced their w T ay inward through that 
fair and smiling surface. Magdalen’s first glance at this Venus of 
the autumn period of female life more than satisfied her that she 
had done well to feel her ground in disguise before she ventured on 
matching herself against Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Have I the pleasure of addressing the lady who called this morn- 
ing ?” inquired the housekeeper. “ Am I speaking to Miss Garth ?” 

Something in the expression of her eyes, as she asked that ques- 
tion, warned Magdalen to turn her face farther inward from the 
window than she had turned it yet. The bare doubt whether the 
housekeeper might not have seen her already under too strong a 
light, shook her self-possession for the moment. She gave herself 
time to recover it, and merely answered by a bow. 

“ Accept my excuses, ma’am, for the place in which I am com- 
pelled to receive you,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount in fluent English, 
spoken with a foreign accent. “ Mr. Yanstone is only here for a 
temporary purpose. We leave for the sea-side to-morrow afternoon, 
and it has not been thought worth while to set the house in proper 
order. Will you take a seat, and oblige me by mentioning the ob- 
ject of your visit ?” 

She glided imperceptibly a step or two nearer to Magdalen, and 
placed a chair for her exactly opposite the light from t^e window. 
“ Pray sit down,” said Mrs. Lecount, looking with the tenderest in- 
terest at the visitor’s inflamed eyes through the visitor’s net veil. 

“ I am suffering, as you see, from a complaint in the eyes,” replied 
Magdalen, steadily keeping her profile toward the window, and 


234 


NO NAME. 


carefully pitching her voice to the tone of Miss Garth’s. “ I must 
beg your permission to wear my veil down, and to sit away from 
the light.” She said those words, feeling mistress of herself again. 
With perfect composure she drew the chair back into the corner of 
the room beyond the window and seated herself, keeping the shad- 
ow of her bonnet well over her face. Mrs. Lecount’s persuasive lips 
murmured a polite expression of sympathy ; Mrs. Lecount’s ami- 
able black eyes looked more interested in the strange lady than 
ever. She placed a chair for herself exactly on a line with Mag- 
dalen’s, and sat so close to the wall as to force her visitor either to 
turn her head a little farther round toward the window, or to fail 
in politeness by not looking at the person whom she addressed. 
“Yes,” said Mrs. Lecount, with a confidential little cough. “And 
to what circumstances am I indebted for the honor of this visit ?” 

“ May I inquire, first, if my name happens to be familiar to you ?” 
said Magdalen, turning toward her as a matter of necessity, but 
coolly holding up her handkerchief at the same time between her 
face and the light. 

“ No,” answered Mrs. Lecount, with another little cough, rather 
harsher than the first. “ The name of Miss Garth is not familiar 
to me.” 

“ In that case,” pursued Magdalen, “ I shall best explain the object 
that causes me to intrude on you by mentioning who I am. I lived 
for many years as governess in the family of the late Mr. Andrew 
Vanstone, of Combe-Raven, and I come here in the interest of his 
orphan daughters.” 

Mrs. Lecount’s hands, which had been smoothly sliding one over 
the other up to this time, suddenly stopped ; and Mrs. Lecount’s 
lips, self-forgetfully shutting up, owned they were too thin at the 
very outset of the interview. 

“I am surprised you can bear the light out-of-doors without a 
green shade,” she quietly remarked ; leaving the false Miss Garth’s 
announcement of herself as completely unnoticed as if she had not 
spoken at all. 

“ I find a shade over my eyes keeps them too hot at this time of 
the year,” rejoined Magdalen, steadily matching the housekeeper’s 
composure. “ May I ask whether you heard what I said just now 
on the subject of my errand in this house ?” 

“ May I inquire on my side, ma’am, in what way that errand can 
possibly concern me retorted Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Certainly,” said Magdalen. “ I come to you because Mr. Noel 
Yanstone’s intentions toward the two young ladies were made 
known to them in the form of a letter from yourself.” 

That plain answer had its effect. It warned Mrs. Lecount that 
the strange lady was better informed than she had at first suspect- 


NO NAME. 


235 


ed, and that it might hardly be wise, under the circumstances, to 
dismiss her unheard. 

“ Pray pardon me,” said the housekeeper, “ I scarcely understood 
before; I perfectly understand now. You are mistaken, ma’am, in 
supposing that I am of any importance, or that I exercise any in- 
fluence in this painful matter. I am the mouth-piece of Mr. Noel 
Yanstone; the pen he holds, if you will excuse the expression — 
nothing more. He is an invalid ; and, like other invalids, he has 
his bad days and his good. It was his bad day when that answer 
was written to the young person — , shall I call her Miss Yanstone ? 
I will, with pleasure, poor girl ; for who am I to make distinctions, 
and what is it to me whether her parents were married or not ? As 
I was saying, it was one of Mr. Noel Yanstone’s bad days Vhen that 
answer was sent, and therefore I had to write it ; simply as his sec- 
retary, for want of a better. If you wish to speak on the subject of 
these young ladies — , shall I call them young ladies, as you did just 
now? no, poor things, I will call them the Miss Yanstones. — If you 
wish to speak on the subject of these Miss Yanstones, I will men- 
tion your name, and your object in favoring me with this call, to 
Mr. Noel Yanstone. He is alone in the parlor, and this is one of his 
good days. I have the influence of an old servant over him, and I 
will use that influence with pleasure in your behalf. Shall I go at 
once ?” asked Mrs. Lecount, rising, with the friendliest anxiety to 
make herself useful. 

“ If you please,” replied Magdalen ; “ and if I am not taking any 
undue advantage of your kindness.” 

“ On the contrary,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “ you are laying me 
under an obligation — you are permitting me, in my very limited 
way, to assist the performance of a benevolent action.” She bowed, 
smiled, and glided out of the room. 

Left by herself, Magdalen allowed the anger which she had sup- 
pressed in Mrs. Lecount’s presence to break free from her. For 
want of a nobler object to attack, it took the direction of the toad. 
The sight of the hideous little reptile sitting placid on his rock 
throne, with his bright eyes staring impenetrably into vacancy, ir- 
ritated every nerve in her body. She looked at the creature with 
a shrinking intensity of hatred; she whispered at it maliciously 
through her set teeth. “ I wonder whose blood runs coldest,” she 
said, “ yours, you little monster, or Mrs. Lecount’s ? I wonder 
which is the slimiest, her heart or your back ? You hateful wretfth, 
do you know what your mistress is ? Your mistress is a devil !” 

The speckled skin under the toad’s mouth mysteriously wrinkled 
itself, then slowly expanded again, as if he had swallowed the words 
just addressed to him. Magdalen started back in disgust from the 
first perceptible movement in the creature’s body, trifling as it was, 


236 


NO NAME. 


and returned to her chair. She had not seated herself again a mo- 
ment too soon. The door opened noiselessly, and Mrs. Lecount ap- 
peared once more. 

“ Mr. Yanstone will see you,” she said, u if you will kindly wait a 
few minutes. He will ring the parlor bell when his present occu- 
pation is at an end, and he is ready to receive you. Be careful, 
ma’am, not to depress his spirits, nor to agitate him in any way. His 
heart has been a cause of serious anxiety to those about him, from 
his earliest years. There is no positive disease ; there is only a 
chronic feebleness — a fatty degeneration — a want of vital power in 
the organ itself. His heart will go on well enough if you don’t 
give his heart too much to do — that is the advice of all the medical 
men who have seen him. You will not forget it, and you will keep 
a guard over your conversation accordingly. Talking of medical 
men, have you ever tried the Golden Ointment for that sad afflic- 
tion in your eyes? It has been described to me as an excellent 
remedy.” 

“ It has not succeeded in my case,” replied Magdalen, sharply. 
“ Before I see Mr. Noel Yanstone,” she continued, “may I inquire — ” 

“ I beg your pardon,” interposed Mrs. Lecount. “ Hoes your ques- 
tion refer in any way to those two poor girls ?” 

“ It refers to the Miss Yanstones.” 

“ Then I can’t enter into it. Excuse me, I really can’t discuss 
these poor girls (I am so glad to hear you call them the Miss Yan- 
stones !) except in my master’s presence, and by my master’s express 
permission. Let us talk of something else while we are waiting 
here. Will you notice my glass Tank ? I have every reason to be- 
lieve that it is a perfect novelty in England.” 

“I looked at the Tank while you were out of the room,” said 
Magdalen. 

“Did you? You take no interest in the subject, I dare say? 
Quite natural. I took no interest either until I was married. My 
dear husband — dead many years since — formed my tastes, and ele- 
vated me to himself. You have heard of the late Professor Lecomte, 
the eminent Swiss naturalist ? I am his widow. The English circle 
at Zurich (wfflere I lived in my late master’s service) Anglicized my 
name to Lecount. Your generous country people will have nothing 
foreign about them — not even a name, if they can help it. But I 
was speaking of my husband — my dear husband, who permitted me 
to assist him in his pursuits. I have had only one interest since 
his death — an interest in science. Eminent in many things, the 
professor was great at reptiles. He left me his Subjects and his 
Tank. I had no other legacy. There is the Tank. All the Subjects 
died but this quiet little fellow — this nice little toad. Are you sur- 
prised at my liking him ? There is nothing to be surprised at 


NO NAME. 


237 


The professor lived long enough to elevate me above the common 
prejudice against the reptile creation. Properly understood, the 
reptile creation is beautiful. Properly dissected, the reptile creation 
is instructive in the last degree.” She stretched out her little fin- 
ger, and gently stroked the toad’s back with the tip of it. “ So 
refreshing to the touch,” said Mrs. Lecount — “so nice and cool this 
summer weather !” 

The bell from the parlor rang. Mrs. Lecount rose, bent fondly 
over the Aquarium, and chirruped to the toad at parting as if it had 
been a bird. “ Mr. Yanstone is ready to receive you. Follow me, 
if you please, Miss Garth.” With these words she opened the door, 
and led the way out of the room. 


CHAPTER III. 

“ Miss Garth, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, opening the parlor door, 
and announcing the visitor’s appearance with the tone and manner 
of a well-bred servant. 

Magdalen found herself in a long, narrow room, consisting of a 
back parlor and a front parlor, which had been thrown into one by 
opening the folding-doors between them. Seated not far from the 
front window, with his back to the light, she saw a frail, flaxen- 
haired, self-satisfied little man, clothed in a fair white dressing-gown 
many sizes too large for him, with a nosegay of violets drawn neatly 
through the button-hole over his breast. He looked from thirty to 
five-and-thirty years old. His complexion was as delicate as a young 
girl’s, his eyes were of the lightest blue, his upper lip was adorned 
by a weak little white mustache, waxed and twisted at either end 
into a thin spiral curl. When any object specially attracted his at- 
tention, he half closed his eyelids to look at it. When he smiled, 
the skin at his temples crumpled itself up into a nest of wicked 
little wrinkles. He had a plate of strawberries on his lap, with a 
napkin under them to preserve the purity of his white dressing- 
gown. At his right hand stood a large round table, covered with 
a collection of foreign curiosities, which seemed to have been 
brought together from the four quarters of the globe. Stuffed birds 
from Africa, porcelain monster^ from China, silver ornaments and 
utensils from India and Peru, mosaic work from Italy, and bronzes 
from France, were all heaped together pell-mell with the coarse 
deal boxes and dingy leather cases which served to pack them for 
traveling. The little man apologized, with a cheerful and simper- 
ing conceit, for his litter of curiosities, his dressing-gown, and his 
delicate health ; and, waving his hand toward a chair, placed his 


238 


NO NAME. 


attention, with pragmatical politeness, at the visitor’s disposal. 
Magdalen looked at him with a momentary doubt whether Mrs. 
Lecount had not deceived her. Was this the man who mercilessly 
followed the path on which his merciless father had walked before 
him ? She could hardly believe it. “ Take a seat, Miss Garth,” he 
repeated, observing her hesitation, and announcing his own name 
in a high, thin, fretfully-consequential voice: “I am Mr. Noel Van- 
stone. You wished to see me — here I am !” 

“ May I be permitted to retire, sir ?” inquired Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Certainly not !” replied her master. “ Stay here, Lecount, and 
keep ns company. Mrs. Lecount has my fullest confidence,” he con- 
tinued, addressing Magdalen. “ Whatever you say to me, ma’am, 
you say to her. She is a domestic treasure. There is not another 
house in England has such a treasure as Mrs. Lecount.” 

The housekeeper listened to the praise of her domestic virtues 
with eyes immovably fixed on her elegant chemisette. But Mag- 
dalen’s quick penetration had previously detected a look that pass- 
ed between Mrs. Lecount and her master, which suggested that 
Noel Vanstone had been instructed beforehand what to say and da 
in his visitor’s presence. The suspicion of this, and the obstacles 
which the room presented to arranging her position in it so as to 
keep her face from the light, warned Magdalen to be on her guard. 

She had taken her chair at first nearly midway in the room. An 
instant’s after-reflection induced her to move her seat toward the 
left hand, so as to place herself just inside, and close against, the 
left post of the folding-door. In this position, she dexterously bar- 
red the only passage by which Mrs. Lecount could have skirted 
round the large table, and contrived to front Magdalen by taking a 
chair at her master’s side. On the right hand of the table the empty 
space was well occupied by the fire-place and fender, by some travel- 
ing-trunks, and a large packing-case. There was no alternative left 
for Mrs. Lecount but to place herself on a line with Magdalen against 
the opposite post of the folding-door, or to push rudely past the 
visitor with the obvious intention of getting in front of her. With 
an expressive little cough, and with one steady look at her master, 
the housekeeper conceded the point, and took her seat against the 
right-hand door-post. “ Wait a little,” thought Mrs. Lecount; “ my 
turn next !” 

“ Mind what you are about, ma’am !” cried Noel Vanstone, as 
Magdalen accidentally approached the table in moving her chair. 
“ Mind the sleeve of your cloak ! Excuse me, you nearly knocked 
down that silver candlestick. Pray don’t suppose it’s a common 
candlestick. It’s nothing of the sort — it’s a Peruvian candlestick. 
There are only three of that pattern in the world. One is in the 
possession of the President of Peru ; one is locked up m the Vati- 


NO NAME. 


239 


can ; and one is on My table. It cost ten pounds ; it’s worth fifty. 
One of my father’s bargains, ma’am. All these things are my father’s 
bargains. There is not another house in England which has such 
curiosities as these. Sit down, Lecount ; I beg you will make your- 
self comfortable. Mrs. Lecount is like the curiosities, Miss Garth — - 
she is one of my father’s bargains. You are one of my father’s bar- 
gains, are you not, Lecount? My father was a remarkable man, 
ma’am. You will be reminded of him here at every turn. I have 
got his dressing-gown on at this moment. No such linen as this is 
made now — you can’t get it for love or money. Would you like to 
feel the texture ? Perhaps you’re no judge of texture ? Perhaps 
you would prefer talking to me about these two pupils of yours? 
They are two, are they not ? Are they fine girls ? Plump, fresh, 
full-blown English beauties ?” 

“ Excuse me, sir,” interposed Mrs. Lecount, sorrowfully. “ I must 
really beg permission to retire if you speak of the poor things in 
that way. I can’t sit by, sir, and hear them turned into ridicule. 
Consider their position ; consider Miss Garth.” 

“ You good creature !” said Noel Yanstone, surveying the house- 
keeper through his half-closed eyelids. “ You excellent Lecount ! 
I assure you, ma’am, Mrs. Lecount is a worthy creature. You will 
observe that she pities the two girls. I don’t go so far as that my- 
self, but I can make allowances for them. I am a large-minded 
man. I can make allowances for them and for you.” He smiled 
with the most cordial politeness, and helped himself to a strawberry 
from the dish on his lap. 

“ You shock Miss Garth ; indeed, sir, without meaning it, you 
shock Miss Garth,” remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. “ She is not accus- 
tomed to you as I am. Consider Miss Garth, sir. As a favor to me , 
consider Miss Garth.” 

Thus far Magdalen had resolutely kept silence. The burning 
anger, which would have betrayed her in an instant if she had let it 
flash its way to the surface, throbbed fast and fiercely at her heart, 
and warned her, while Noel Yanstone was speaking, to close her 
lips. She would have allowed him to talk on uninterruptedly for 
some minutes more, if Mrs. Lecount had not interfered for the 
second time. The refined insolence of the housekeeper’s pity was a 
woman’s insolence ; and it stung her into instantly controlling her 
self. She had never more admirably imitated Miss Garth’s voice 
and manner than when she spoke her next words. 

“ You are very good,” she said to Mrs. Lecount. “ I make no claim 
to be treated with any extraordinary consideration. I am a govern- 
ess, and I don’t expect it. I have only one favor to ask. I beg Mr. 
Noel Yanstone, for his own sake, to hear what I have to say to him.” 

“ You understand, sir ?” observed Mrs. Lecount. “ It appears that 


240 


NO NAME. 


Miss Garth has some serious warning to give you. She says you are 
to hear her, for your own sake.” 

Mr. Noel Vanstone’s fair complexion suddenly turned white. He 
put away the plate of strawberries among his father’s bargains. His 
hand shook, and his little figure twisted itself uneasily in the chair. 
Magdalen observed him attentively. “ One discovery already,” she 
thought ; “ he is a coward !” 

“What do you mean, ma’am?” asked Noel Yanstone, with visible 
trepidation of look and manner. u What do you mean by telling me 
I must listen to you for my own sake ? If you come here to intimi- 
date me, you come to the wrong man. My strength of character was 
universally noticed in our circle at Zurich — wasn’t it, Lecount ?” 

“ Universally, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ But let us hear Miss 
Garth. Perhaps I have misinterpreted her meaning.” 

“ On the contrary,” replied Magdalen, u you have exactly expressed 
my meaning. My object in coming here is to warn Mr. Noel Van- 
stone against the course which he is now taking.” 

“ Don’t !” pleaded Mrs. Lecount. u Oh, if you want to help these 
poor girls, don’t talk in that way ! Soften his resolution, ma’am, by 
entreaties ; don’t strengthen it by threats !” She a little overstrained 
the tone of humility in which she spoke those words — a little over- 
acted the look of apprehension which accompanied them. If Mag- 
dalen had not seen plainly enough already that it was Mrs. Lecount’s 
habitual practice to decide every thing for her master in the first in- 
stance, and then to persuade him that he was not acting under his 
housekeeper’s resolution but under his own, she would have seen it 
now. 

“ You hear what Lecount has just said ?” remarked Noel Vanstone. 
“You hear the unsolicited testimony of a person who has known 
me from childhood ? Take care, Miss Garth — take care !” He com- 
placently arranged the tails of his white dressing - gown over his 
knees, and took the plate of strawberries back on his lap. 

“ I have no wish to offend you,” said Magdalen. “ I am only anx- 
ious to open your eyes to the truth. You are not acquainted with 
the characters of the two sisters whose fortunes have fallen into your 
possession. I have known them from childhood; and I come to 
give you the benefit of my experience in their interests and in yours. 
You have nothing to dread from the elder of the two ; she patiently 
accepts the hard lot which you, and your father before you, have 
forced on her. The younger sister’s conduct is the very opposite of 
this. She lias already declined to submit to your father’s decision, 
and she now refuses to be silenced by Mrs. Lecount’s letter. Take 
my word for it, she is capable of giving you serious trouble if you 
persist in making an enemy of her.” 

Noel Yanstone changed color once more, and began to fidget agaia 


NO NAME. 


241 


in his chair. “ Serious trouble,” he repeated, with a blank look. “ If 
you mean writing letters, ma’am, she has given trouble enough al- 
ready. She has written once to me, and twice to my father. One 
of the letters to my father was a threatening letter — wasn’t it, Le^ 
count ?” 

“ She expressed her feelings, poor child,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ 1 
thought it hard to send her back her letter, but your dear father 
knew best. What I said at the time was, Why not let her express 
her feelings ? What are a few threatening words, after all ? In her 
position, poor creature, they are words, and nothing more.” 

“ I advise you not to be too sure of that,” said Magdalen. “ I 
know her better than you do.” 

She paused at those words — paused in a momentary terror. The 
sting of Mrs. Lecount’s pity had nearly irritated her into forgetting 
her assumed character, and speaking in her own voice. 

“You have referred to the letters written by my pupil,” she re- 
sumed, addressing Noel Yanstone as soon as she felt sure of herself 
again. “We will say nothing about what she has written to your 
father ; we will only speak of what she has written to you. Is there 
any thing unbecoming in her letter, any thing said in it that is false ? 
Is it not true that these two sisters have be^en cruelly deprived of the 
provision which their father made for them ? His will to this day 
speaks for him and for them ; and it only speaks to no purpose, be- 
cause he was not aware that his marriage obliged him to make it 
again, and because he died before he could remedy the error. Can 
you deny that ?” 

Noel Yanstone smiled, and helped himself to a strawberry. “ I 
don’t attempt to deny it,” he said. “ Go on, Miss Garth.” 

“ Is it not true,” persisted Magddlen, “ that the law which has 
taken the money from these sisters, whose father made no second 
will, has now given that very money to you, whose father made no 
will at all ? Surely, explain it how you may, this is hard on those 
orphan girls ?” 

“ Yery hard,” replied Noel Yanstone. “ It strikes you in that 
light, too — doesn’t it, Lecount ?” 

Mrs. Lecount shook her head, and closed her handsome black eyes. 
“ Harrowing,” she said ; “I can characterize it, Miss Garth, by no 
other word — harrowing. How the young person — no ! how Miss 
Yanstone, the younger — discovered that my late respected master 
made no will, I am at a loss to understand. Perhaps it was put in 
the papers ? But I am interrupting you, Miss Garth. You have some- 
thing more to say about your pupil’s letter ?” She noiselessly drew her 
chair forward, as she said these words, a few inches beyond the line 
of the visitor’s chair. The attempt was neatly made, but it proved 
useless. Magdalen only kept her head more to the left, and the 


242 


NO NAME. 


packing-case on the floor prevented Mrs. Lecount from advancing 
any farther. 

“ I have only one more question to put,” said Magdalen. “ My 
pupil’s letter addressed a proposal to Mr. Noel Vanstone. I beg 
him to inform me why he has refused to consider it.” 

“My good lady!” cried Noel Vanstone, arching his white eye- 
brows in satirical astonishment. “Are you really in earnest? Do 
you know what the proposal is ? Have you seen the letter ?” 

“ I am quite in earnest,” said Magdalen, “ and I have seen the 
letter. It entreats you to remember how Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s 
fortune has come into your hands ; it informs you that one-half of 
that fortune, divided between his daughters, was what his will in- 
tended them to have ; and it asks of your sense of justice to do for 
his children what he would have done for them himself if he had 
lived. In plainer words still, it asks you to give one-half of the 
money to the daughters, and it leaves you free to keep the other 
half yourself. That is the proposal. Why have you refused to con- 
sider it ?” 

“ For the simplest possible reason, Miss Garth,” said Noel Van- 
stone, in high good-humor. “ Allow me to remind you of a well- 
known proverb : A fool and his money are soon parted. Whatever 
else I may be, ma’am, I’m not a fool.” 

“ Don’t put it in that way, sir !” remonstrated Mrs. Lecount. “ Be 
serious — pray be serious !” 

“ Quite impossible, Lecount,” rejoined her master. “ I can’t be 
serious. My poor father, Miss Garth, took a high moral point of 
view in this matter. Lecount, there, takes a high moral point of 
view — don’t you, Lecount ? I do nothing of the sort. I have lived 
too long in the Continental atmosphere to trouble myself about 
moral points of view. My course in this business is as plain as two 
and two make four. I have got the money, and I should be a born 
idiot if I parted with it. There is my point of view ! Simple 
enough, isn’t it ? I don’t stand on my dignity ; I don’t meet you 
with the law, which is all on my side ; I don’t blame your coming 
here, as a total stranger, to try and alter my resolution ; I don’t 
blame the two girls for wanting to dip their fingers into my purse. 
All I say is, I am not fool enough to open it. Pas si bete, as we 
used to say in the English circle at Zurich. You understand 
French, Miss Garth ? Pas si bete /” He set aside his plate of straw- 
berries once more, and daintily dried his fingers on his fine white 
napkin. 

Magdalen kept her temper. If she could have struck him dead 
by lifting her hand at that moment, it is probable she would have 
lifted it. But she kept her temper. 

“Am I to understand,” she asked, “ that the last words you have 


NO NAME. 


24 


to say in this matter are the words said for you in Mrs. Lecount’s 
letter ?” 

“ Precisely so,” replied Noel Vanstone. 

“You have inherited your own father’s fortune, as well as the 
fortune of Mr. Andrew Vanstone, and yet you feel no obligation to 
act from motives of justice or generosity toward these two sisters ? 
All you think it necessary to say to them is, you have got the mon- 
ey, and you refuse to part with a single farthing of it ?” 

“ Most accurately stated ! Miss Garth, you are a woman of busi- 
ness. Lecount, Miss Garth is a woman of business.” 

“ Don’t appeal to me, sir,” cried Mrs. Lecount, gracefully wring- 
ing her plump white hands. “ I can’t bear it ! I must interfere 1 
Let me suggest — oh, what do you call it in English ? — a compro- 
mise. Dear Mr. Noel, you are perversely refusing to do yourself jus- 
tice ; you have better reasons than the reason you have given to 
Miss Garth. You follow your honored father’s example; you feel 
it due to his memory to act in this matter as he acted before you. 
That is his reason, Miss Garth — I implore you on my knees take 
that as his reason. He will do what his dear father did ; no more, 
no less. His dear father made a proposal, and he himself will now 
make that proposal over again. Yes, Mr. Noel, you will remember 
what this poor girl says in her letter to you. Her sister has been 
obliged to go out as a governess ; and she herself, in losing her for- 
tune, has lost the hope of her marriage for years and years to come. 
You will remember this — and you will give the hundred pounds to 
one, and the hundred pounds to the other, which your admirable 
father offered in the past time ? If he does this, Miss Garth, will 
he do enough ? If he gives a hundred pounds each to these unfor- 
tunate sisters — ?” 

“ He will repent the insult to the last hour of his life,” said Mag- 
dalen. 

The instant that answer passed her lips she would have given 
worlds to recall it. Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting in the right 
place at last. Those rash words of Magdalen’s had burst from her 
passionately, in her own voice. 

Nothing but the habit of public performance saved her from mak- 
ing the serious error that she had committed more palpable still, by 
attempting to set it right. Here her past practice in the Enter- 
tainment came to her rescue, and urged her to go on instantly in 
Miss Garth’s voice as if nothing had happened. 

“You mean well, Mrs. Lecount,” she continued, “but you are do- 
ing harm instead of good. My pupils will accept no such compro- 
mise as you propose. I am sorry to have spoken violently just now ; 
I beg you will excuse me.” She looked hard for information in the 
housekeeper’s face while she spoke those conciliatory words. Mrs. 


244 


NO NAME. 


Lecount baffled the look by putting her handkerchief to her eyes. 
Had she, or had she not, noticed the momentary change in Mag- 
dalen’s voice from the tones that were assumed to the tones that 
were natural ? Impossible to say. 

“ What more can I do !” murmured Mrs. Lecount behind her 
handkerchief. “ Give me time to think — give me time to recover 
myself. May I retire, sir, for a moment ? My nerves are shaken by 
this sad scene. I must have a glass of water, or I think I shall faint. 
Don’t go yet, Miss Garth. I beg you will give us time to set this 
sad matter right, if we can — I beg you will remain until I come 
back.” 

There were two doors of entrance to the room. One, the door 
into the front parlor, close at Magdalen’s left hand. The other, the 
door into the back parlor, situated behind her. Mrs. Lecount po- 
litely retired — through the open folding-doors — by this latter means 
of exit, so as not to disturb the visitor by passing in front of her. 
Magdalen waited until she heard the door open and close again be- 
hind her, and then resolved to make the most of the opportunity 
which left her alone with Noel Yanstone. The utter hopelessness 
of rousing a generous impulse in that base nature had now been 
proved by her own experience. The last chance left was to treat 
him like the craven creature he was, and to influence him through 
his fears. 

Before she could speak, Noel Yanstone himself broke the silence. 
Cunningly as he strove to hide it, he was half angry, half alarmed 
at his housekeeper’s desertion of him. He looked doubtingly at his 
visitor ; he showed a nervous anxiety to conciliate her until Mrs. Le- 
count’s return. 

“ Pray remember, ma’am, I never denied that this case was a hard 
one,” he began. “ You said just now you had no wish to offend me 
— and I’m sure I don’t want to offend you. May I offer you some 
strawberries ? Would you like to look at my father’s bargains ? I 
assure you, ma’am, I am naturally a gallant man ; and I feel for both 
these sisters — especially the younger one. Touch me on the subject 
of the tender passion, and you touch me on a weak place. Nothing 
would please me more than to hear that Miss Yanstone’s lover (I’m 
sure I always call her Miss Yanstone, and so does Lecount) — I say, 
ma’am, nothing would please me more than to hear that Miss Yan- 
stone’s lover had come back and married her. If a loan of money 
would be likely to bring him back, and if the security offered was 
good, and if my lawyer thought me justified — ” 

“ Stop, Mr. Yanstone,” said Magdalen. “You are entirely mis- 
taken in your estimate of the person you have to deal with. You 
are seriously wrong in supposing that the marriage of the younger 
sister — if she could be married in a week’s time — would make any 


NO NAME. 


245 


difference in the convictions which induced her to write to your 
father and to you. I don’t deny that she may act from a mixture 
of motives. I don’t deny that she clings to the hope of hastening 
her marriage, and to the hope of rescuing her sister from a life of 
dependence. But if both those objects were accomplished by other 
means, nothing would induce her to leave you in possession of the 
inheritance which her father meant his children to have. I know 
her, Mr. Yanstone ! She is a nameless, homeless, friendless wretch. 
The law which takes care of you, the law which takes care of all 
legitimate children, casts her like carrion to the winds. It is your 
law — not hers. She only knows it as the instrument of a vile op- 
pression, an insufferable wrong. The sense of that wrong haunts 
her like a possession of the devil. The resolution to right that 
wrong burns in her like fire. If that miserable girl was married 
and rich, with millions to-morrow, do you think she would move 
an inch from her purpose ? I tell you she would resist, to the last 
breath in her body, the vile injustice which has struck at the help- 
less children, through the calamity of their father’s death ! I tell 
you she would shrink from no means which a desperate woman 
can employ to force that closed hand of yours open, or die in the 
attempt I” 

She stopped abruptly. Once more her own indomitable earnest- 
ness had betrayed her. Once more the inborn nobility of that 
perverted nature had risen superior to the deception which it had 
stooped to practice. The scheme of the moment vanished from her 
mind’s view ; and the resolution of her life burst its way outward 
in her own words, in her own tones, pouring hotly and more hotly 
from her heart. She saw the abject manikin before her cowering, 
silent, in his chair. Had his fears left him sense enough to perceive 
the change in her voice ? No : his face spoke the truth — his fears 
had bewildered him. This time the chance of the moment had be- 
friended her. The door behind her chair had not opened again 
yet. “ No ears but his have heard me,” she thought, with a sense 
of unutterable relief. “ I have escaped Mrs. Lecount.” 

She had done nothing of the kind. Mrs. Lecount had never left 
the room. 

After opening the door and closing it again, without going out, 
the housekeeper had noiselessly knelt down behind Magdalen’s 
chair. Steadying herself against the post of the folding-door, she 
took a pair of scissors from her pocket, waited until Noel Yanstone 
(from whose view she was entirely hidden) had attracted Magdalen’s 
attention by speaking to her, and then bent forward, with the scis- 
sors ready in her hand. The skirt of the false Miss Garth’s gown, 
— the brown alpaca dress, with the white spots on it — touched the 
floor, within the housekeeper’s reach. Mrs. Lecount lifted the outei 


246 


NO NAME. 


4 

of the two flounces which ran round the bottom of the dress one 
over the other, softly cut away a little irregular fragment of stuff 
from the inner flounce, and neatly smoothed the outer one over it 
again, so as to hide the gap. By the time she had put the scissors 
back in her pocket, and had risen to her feet (sheltering herself be- 
hind the post of the folding-door), Magdalen had spoken her last 
words. Mrs. Lecount quietly repeated the ceremony of opening and 
shutting the back parlor door ; and returned to her place. 

“ What has happened, sir, in my absence ?” she inquired, address- 
ing her master with a look of alarm. “ You are pale ; you are agi- 
tated ! Oh, Miss Garth, have you forgotten the caution I gave you 
in the other room ?” 

“ Miss Garth has forgotten every thing,” cried Noel Yanstone, re- 
covering his lost composure on the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount. 
“ Miss Garth has threatened me in the most outrageous manner. I 
forbid you to pity either of those two girls any more, Lecount — 
especially the younger one. She is the most desperate wretch I ever 
heard of ! If she can’t get my money by fair means, she threatens 
to have it by foul. Miss Garth has told me that to my face. To 
my face !” he repeated, folding his arms, and looking mortally in- 
sulted. 

“ Compose yourself, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ Pray compose 
yourself, and leave me to speak to Miss Garth. I regret to hear, 
ma’am, that you have forgotten what I said to you in the next room. 
You have agitated Mr. Noel ; you have compromised the interests 
you came here to plead ; and you have only repeated what we knew 
before. The language you have allowed yourself to use in my ab- 
sence is the same language which your pupil was foolish enough to 
employ when she wrote for the second time to my late master. How 
can a lady of your years and experience seriously repeat such non- 
sense ? This girl boasts and threatens. She will do this ; she will 
do that. You have her confidence, ma’am. Tell me, if you please, 
in plain words, what can she do ?” 

Sharply as the taunt was pointed, it glanced off harmless. Mrs. 
Lecount had planted her sting once too often. Magdalen rose in 
complete possession of her assumed character, and composedly 
terminated the interview. Ignorant as she was of what had hap- 
pened behind her chair, she saw a change in Mrs. Lecount’s look 
and manner which warned her to run no more risks, and to trust 
herself no longer in the house. 

“ I am not in my pupil’s confidence,” she said. “ Her own acts 
will answer your question when the time comes. I can only tell 
you, from my own knowledge of her, that she is no boaster. What 
she wrote to Mr. Michael Yanstone was what she was prepared to 
do — what, I have reason to think, she was actually on the point of 


NO NAME. 


247 


<|oing, when her plans were overthrown by his death. Mr. Michael 
Vanstone’s son has only to persist in following his father’s course to 
find, before long, that I am not mistaken in my pupil, and that I 
have not come here to intimidate him by empty threats. My errand 
is done. I leave Mr. Noel Vanstone with two alternatives to choose 
from. I leave him to share Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s fortune with 
Mr. Andrew Vanstone’s daughters — or to persist in his present re- 
fusal and face the consequences.” She bowed, and walked to the 
door. 

Noel Vanstone started to his feet, with anger and alarm strug- 
gling which should express itself first in his blank white face. Be- 
fore he could open his lips, Mrs. Lecount’s plump hands descended 
on his shoulders, put him softly back in his chair, and restored the 
plate of strawberries to its former position on his lap. 

“ Refresh yourself, Mr. Noel, with a few more strawberries,” she 
said, “ and leave Miss Garth to me.” 

She followed Magdalen into the passage, and closed the door of 
the room after her. 

“ Are you residing in London, ma’am ?” asked Mrs. Lecount. 

“ No,” replied Magdalen. “ I reside in the country.” 

“ If I want to write to you, where can I address my letter ?” 

“ To the post-office, Birmingham,” said Magdalen, mentioning the 
place which she had last left, and at which all letters were still ad- 
dressed to her. 

Mrs. Lecount repeated the direction to fix it in her memory, ad- 
vanced two steps in the passage, and quietly laid her right hand on 
Magdalen’s arm. 

“A word of advice, ma’am,” she said; “one word at parting. 
You are a bold woman and a clever woman. Don’t be too bold; 
don’t be too clever. You are risking more than you think for.” 
She suddenly raised herself on tiptoe, and whispered the next words 
in Magdalen’s ear. U I Jwld you in the hollow of my hand /” said 
Mrs. Lecount, with a fierce hissing emphasis on every syllable. 
Her left hand clenched itself stealthily as she spoke. It was the 
hand in which she had concealed the fragment of stuff from Mag- 
dalen’s gown — the hand which held it fast at that moment. 

“ What do you mean ?” asked Magdalen, pushing her back. 

Mrs. Lecount glided away politely to open the house door. 

“ I mean nothing now,” she said ; u wait a little, and time may 
show. One last question, ma’am, before I bid you good-bye. When 
your pupil was a little innocent child, did she ever amuse herself by 
building a house of cards ?” 

Magdalen impatiently answered by a gesture in the affirmative. 

“Did you ever see her build up the house higher and higher,” 
proceeded Mrs. Lecount, “ till it was quite a pagoda of cards ? Did 


248 


NO NAME. 


you ever see her open her little child’s eyes wide and look at it, and 
feel so proud of what she had done already that she wanted to do 
more ? Did you ever see her steady her pretty little hand, and hold 
her innocent breath, and put one other card on the top, and lay the 
whole house, the instant afterward, a heap of ruins on the table ? 
Ah, you have seen that. Give her, if you please, a friendly message 
from me. I venture to say she has built the house high enough al- 
ready ; and I recommend her to be careful before she puts on that 
other card.” 

“ She shall have your message,” said Magdalen, with Miss Garth’s 
bluntness, and Miss Garth’s emphatic nod of the head. u But I 
doubt her minding it. Her hand is rather steadier than you sup- 
pose, and I think she will put on the other card.” 

“And bring the house down,” said Mrs. Lecount. 

“And build it up again,” rejoined Magdalen. “ I wish you good- 
morning.” 

“Good-morning,” said Mrs. Lecount, opening the door. “One 
last word, Miss Garth. Do think of what I said in the back room ! 
Do try the Golden Ointment for that sad affliction in your eyes !” 

As Magdalen crossed the threshold of the door, she was met by 
the postman ascending the house steps with a letter picked out 
from the bundle in his hand. “Noel Vanstone, Esquire?” she 
heard the man say, interrogatively, as she made her way down the 
front garden to the street. 

She passed through the garden gate, little thinking from what 
new difficulty and new danger her timely departure had saved her. 
The letter which the postman had just delivered into the house- 
keeper’s hands was no other than the anonymous letter addressed 
to Noel Vanstone by Captain Wragge. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Mrs. Lecount returned to the parlor, with the fragment of Mag- 
dalen’s dress in one hand, and with Captain Wragge’s letter in the 
other. 

“Have you got rid of her?” asked Noel Vanstone. “Have you 
shut the door at last on Miss Garth ?” 

“Don’t call her Miss Garth, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, smiling con- 
temptuously. “ She is as much Miss Garth as you are. We have 
been favored by the performance of a clever masquerade ; and if we 
had taken the disguise off our visitor, I think we should have found 
under it Miss Vanstone herself. — Here is a letter for you, sir, which 
the postman has just left.” 


NO NAME. 


249 


Slie put the letter on the table within her master’s reach. Noel 
Vanstone’s amazement at the discovery just communicated to him 
kept his whole attention concentrated on the housekeeper’s face. 
He never so much as looked at the letter when she placed it before 
him. 

“ Take my word for it, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, composedly 
taking a chair. “ When our visitor gets home she will put her gray 
hair away in a box, and will euro that sad affliction in her eyes with 
warm water and a sponge. If she had painted the marks on her 
face as well as she painted the inflammation in her eyes, the light 
would have shown me nothing, and I should certainly have been 
deceived. But I saw the marks ; I saw a young woman’s skin un- 
der that dirty complexion of hers ; I heard in this room a true voice 
in a passion, as well as a false voice talking with an accent, and I 
don’t believe in one morsel of that lady’s personal appearance from 
top to toe. The girl herself, in my opinion, Mr. Noel — and a bold 
girl too.” 

“ Why didn’t you lock the door and send for the police ?” asked 
Mr. Noel. “ My father would have sent for the police. You know, 
as well as I do, Lecount, my father would have sent for the police.” 

“ Pardon me, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “ I think your father would 
have waited until he had got something more for the police to do 
than we have got for them yet. We shall see this lady again, sir. 
Perhaps she will come here next time with her own face and her 
own voice. I am curious to see what her own face is like. I am 
curious to know whether what I have heard of her voice in a pas- 
sion is enough to make me recognize her voice when she is calm. 
I possess a little memorial of her visit of which she is not aware, 
and she will not escape me so easily as she thinks. If it turns out 
a useful memorial, you shall know what it is. If not, I will abstain 
from troubling you on so trifling a subject. — Allow me to remind 
you, sir, of the letter under your hand. You have not looked at it 
yet.” 

Noel Yanstone opened the letter. He started as his eye fell on 
the first lines — hesitated — and then hurriedly read it through. The 
paper dropped from his hand, and he sank back in his chair. Mrs. 
Lecount sprang to her feet with the alacrity of a young woman and 
picked up the letter. 

u What has happened, sir ?” she asked. Her face altered as she 
put the question, and her large black eyes hardened fiercely, in gen- 
uine astonishment and alarm. 

“ Send for the police,” exclaimed her master. “ Lecount, I insist 
on being protected. Send for the police !” 

“May I read the letter, sir?” 

He feebly waved his hand. Mrs. Lecount read the letter atten- 


250 


NO NAME. 


tively, and put it aside on the table, without a word, when she had 
done. 

“ Have you nothing to say to me ?” asked Noel Vanstone, staring 
at his housekeeper in blank dismay. “ Lecount, I’m to be robbed ! 
The scoundrel who wrote that letter knows all about it, and won’t 
tell me any thing unless I pay him. I’m to be robbed ! Here’s 
property on this table worth thousands of pounds — property that 
can never be replaced — property that all the crowned heads in Eu- 
rope could not produce if they tried. Lock me in, Lecount, and 
send for the police !” 

Instead of sending for the police, Mrs. Lecount took a large green pa- 
per fan from the chimney-piece, and seated herself opposite her master. 

“You are agitated, Mr. Noel,” she said, “you are heated. Let 
me cool you.” 

With her face as hard as ever — with less tenderness of look and 
manner than most women would have shown if they had been res- 
cuing a half-drowned fly from a milk-jug — she silently and patient' 
ly fanned him for five minutes or more. No practiced eye observ- 
ing the peculiar bluish pallor of his complexion, and the marked 
difficulty with which he drew his breath, could have failed to per- 
ceive that the great organ of life was in this man, what the house- 
keeper had stated it to be, too weak for the function which it was 
called on to perform. The heart labored over its work as if it had 
been the heart of a worn-out old man. 

“ Are you relieved, sir ?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “ Can you think a 
little ? Can you exercise your better judgment ?” 

She rose and put her hand over his heart with as much mechan- 
ical attention and as little genuine interest as if she had been feeling 
the plates at dinner to ascertain if they had been properly warmed. 
“ Yes,” she went on, seating herself again, and resuming the exercise 
of the fan ; “ you are getting better already, Mr. Noel. — Don’t ask me 
about this anonymous letter until you have thought for yourself, and 
have given your own opinion first.” She went on with the fanning, 
and looked him hard in the face all the time. “ Think,” she said ; 
“think, sir, without troubling yourself to express your thoughts. 
Trust to my intimate sympathy with you to read them. Yes, Mr. 
Noel, this letter is a paltry attempt to frighten you. What does L 
say ? It says you are the object of a conspiracy directed by Miss 
Yanstone. We know that already — the lady of the inflamed eyes 
has told us. We snap our fingers at the conspiracy. What does 
the letter say next ? It says the writer has valuable information to 
give you if you will pay for it. What did you call this person your- 
self just now, sir ?” 

“ I called him a scoundrel,” said Noel Yanstone, recovering his 
self-importance, and raising himself gradually in his chair. 


NO NAME. 


251 


i4 1 agree with you in that, sir, as I agree in every thing else,” pro- 
ceeded Mrs. Lecount. “ He is a scoundrel who really has this infor- 
mation, and who means what he says, or he is a mouth-piece of Miss 
Vanstone’s, and she has caused this letter to be written for the pur- 
pose of puzzling us by another form of disguise. Whether the let- 
ter is true, or whether the letter is false — am I not reading your own 
wiser thoughts now, Mr. Noel ? — you know better than to put your 
enemies on their guard by employing the police in this matter too 
soon. I quite agree with you — no police just yet. You will allow 
this anonymous man, or anonymous woman, to suppose you are eas- 
ily frightened ; you will lay a trap for the information in return for 
the trap laid for your money ; you will answer the letter, and see 
what comes of the answer; and you will only pay the expense of 
employing the police when you know the expense is necessary. I 
agree with you again — no expense, if we can help it. In every par- 
ticular, Mr. Noel, my mind and your mind in this matter are one.” 

“ It strikes you in that light, Lecount — does it ?” said Noel Van- 
stone. “ I think so myself ; I certainly think so. I won’t pay the 
police a farthing if I can possibly help it.” He took up the letter 
again, and became fretfully perplexed over a second reading of it. 
“ But the man wants money !” he broke out, impatiently. “ You 
seem to forget, Lecount, that the man wants money.” 

“ Money which you offer him, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount ; u but — 
as your thoughts have already anticipated — money which you don’t 
give him. No ! no ! you say to this man, ‘ Hold out your hand, sir 
and when he has held it, you give him a smack for his pains, and 
put your own hand back in your pocket. — I am so glad to see you 
laughing, Mr. Noel ! so glad to see you getting back your good spir- 
its. We will answer the letter by advertisement, as the writer di- 
rects — advertisement is so cheap ! Your poor hand is trembling a 
little — shall I hold the pen for you ? I am not fit to do more ; but 
I can always promise to hold the pen.” 

Without waiting for his reply, she went into the back parlor, and 
returned with pen, ink, and paper. Arranging a blotting-book on 
her knees, and looking a model of cheerful submission, she placed 
herself once more in front of her master’s chair. 

“ Shall I write from your dictation, sir ?” she inquired. “ Or shall 
I make a little sketch, and will you correct it afterward ? I will 
make a little sketch. Let me see the letter. We are to advertise 
in the I'imes, and we are to address 4 An Unknown Friend.’ What 
shall I say, Mr. Noel ? Stay ; I will write it, and then you can see 
for yourself : ‘ An Unknown Friend is requested to mention (by ad- 
vertisement) an address at which a letter can reach him. The re- 
ceipt of the information which he offers will be acknowledged by a 
reward of-—’ What sum of money do you wish me to set down, sir ?” 


252 


NO NAME. 


“ Set down nothing,” said Noel Yanstone, with a sudden outbreak 
of impatience. “ Money matters are my business — I say money mat- 
ters are my business, Lecount. Leave it to me.” 

“ Certainly, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount, handing her master the 
blotting-book. “You will not forget to be liberal in offering mon- 
ey when you know beforehand you don’t mean to part with it ?” 

“ Don’t dictate, Lecount ! I won’t submit to dictation !” said Noel 
Vanstone, asserting his own independence more and more impatiently. 
w I mean to conduct this business for myself. I am master, Lecount l” 

“ You are master, sir.” 

“ My father was master before me. And I am my father’s son. I 
tell you, Lecount, I am my father's son !” 

Mrs. Lecount bowed submissively. 

“ I mean to set down any sum of money I think right,” pursued 
Noel Yanstone, nodding his little flaxen head vehemently. “ I mean 
to send this advertisement myself. The servant shall take it to the 
stationer’s to be put into the Times. When I ring the bell twice, 
send the servant. You understand, Lecount ? Send the servant.” 

Mrs. Lecount bowed again, and walked slowly to the door. She 
knew to a nicety when to lead her master and when to let him go 
alone. Experience had taught her to govern him in all essential 
points by giving way to him afterward on all points of minor de- 
tail. It was a characteristic of his weak nature — as it is of all weak 
natures — to assert itself obstinately on trifles. The filling in of the 
blank in the advertisement was the trifle in this case ; and Mrs. Le- 
count quieted her master’s suspicions that she was leading him, 
by instantly conceding it. “ My mule has kicked,” she thought to 
herself, in her own language, as she opened the door. “ I can do 
no more with him to-day.” 

“ Lecount !” cried her master, as she stepped into the passage. 
“ Come back.” 

Mrs. Lecount came back. 

“ You’re not offended with me, are you ?” asked Noel Vanstone, 
uneasily. 

“Certainly not, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount. “As you said just 
now — you are master.” 

“ Good creature ! Give me your hand.” He kissed her hand, and 
smiled in high approval of his own affectionate proceeding. “ Le- 
count, you are a worthy creature !” 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. She courtesied and w r ent 
out. “ If he had any brains in that monkey head of his,” she said 
to herself in the passage, “ what a rascal he would be !” 

Left by himself, Noel Yanstone became absorbed in anxious re- 
flection over the blank space in the advertisement. Mrs. Lecount’s 
apparently superfluous hint to him to be liberal in offering money 


NO NAME. 


253 


when he knew he had no intention of parting with it, had been 
founded on an intimate knowledge of his character. He had in- 
herited his father’s sordid love of money, without inheriting his 
father’s hard-headed capacity for seeing the uses to which money 
can be put. His one idea in connection with his wealth was the 
idea of keeping it. He was such an inborn miser that the bare 
prospect of being liberal in theory only daunted him. He took up 
the pen ; laid it down again ; and read the anonymous letter for the 
third time, shaking his head over it suspiciously. “ If I offer this 
man a large sum of money,” he thought, on a sudden, “ how do I 
know he may not find a means of actually making me pay it? 
Women are always in a hurry. Lecount is always in a hurry. I 
have got the afternoon before me — I’ll take the afternoon to con- 
sider it.” 

He fretfully put away the blotting-book, and the sketch of the 
advertisement, on the chair which Mrs. Lecount had just left. As 
he returned to his own seat, he shook his little head solemnly, and 
arranged his white dressing-gown over his knees with the air of a 
man absorbed in anxious thought. Minute after minute passed 
away ; the quarters and the half-hours succeeded each other on the 
dial of Mrs. Lecount’s watch, and still Noel Vanstone remained lost 
in doubt ; still no summons for the servants disturbed the tranquil- 
lity of the parlor bell. 

****** * 

Meanwhile, after parting with Mrs. Lecount, Magdalen had cau- 
tiously abstained from crossing the road to her lodgings, and had 
only ventured to return after making a circuit in the neighborhood. 
When she found herself once more in Vauxliall Walk, the first ob- 
ject which attracted her attention was a cab drawn up before the 
door of the lodgings. A few steps more in advance showed her the 
landlady’s daughter standing at the cab door engaged in a dispute 
with the driver on the subject of his fare. Noticing that the girl’s 
back was turned toward her, Magdalen instantly profited by that 
circumstance, and slipped unobserved into the house. 

She glided along the passage, ascended the stairs, and found her- 
self, on the first landing, face to face with her traveling-companion ! 
There stood Mrs. Wragge, with a pile of small parcels hugged up in 
her arms, anxiously waiting the issue of the dispute with the cab- 
man in the street. To return was impossible — the sound of the 
angry voices below was advancing into the passage. To hesitate 
was worse than useless. But one choice was left — the choice of 
going on — and Magdalen desperately took it. She pushed by Mrs. 
Wragge without a word, ran into her own room, tore off her cloak, 
bonnet, and wig, and threw them down out of sight in the blank 
space between the sofa-bedstead and the wall. 


254 


NO NAME. 


For the first few moments, astonishment bereft Mrs. Wragge of 
the power of speech, and rooted her to the spot where she stood. 
Two out of the collection of parcels in her arms fell from them on 
the stairs. The sight of that catastrophe roused her. “ Thieves !” 
cried Mrs. Wragge, suddenly struck by an idea. “Thieves !” 

Magdalen heard her through the room door, which she had not 
had time to close completely. “Is that you, Mrs. Wragge?” she 
called out in her own voice. “ What is the matter ?” She snatched 
jp a towel while she spoke, dipped it in water, and passed it rapidly 
aver the lower part of her face. At the sound of the familiar voice 
Mrs. Wragge turned round — dropped a third parcel — and, forget- 
ting it in her astonishment, ascended the second flight of stairs. 
Magdalen stepped out on the first-floor landing, with the towel held 
over her forehead as if she was suffering from headache. Her false 
eyebrows required time for their removal, and a headache assumed 
for the occasion suggested the most convenient pretext she could 
devise for hiding them as they were hidden now. 

“ What are you disturbing the house for ?” she asked. “ Pray be 
quiet ; I am half blind with the headache.” 

“ Any thing wrong, ma’am ?” inquired the landlady from the 
passage. 

“ Nothing whatever,” replied Magdalen. “ My friend is timid ; 
and the dispute with the cabman has frightened her. Pay the man 
what he wants, and let him go.” 

“ Where is She ?” asked Mrs. Wragge, in a tremulous whisper. 
“ Where’s the woman who scuttled by me into your room ?” 

“ Pooh !” said Magdalen. “ No woman scuttled by you — as you 
call it. Look in and see for yourself.” 

She threw open the door. Mrs. Wragge walked into the room — 
looked all over it — saw nobody — and indicated her astonishment 
at the result by dropping a fourth parcel, and trembling helplessly 
from head to foot. 

“ I saw her go in here,” said Mrs. Wragge, in awe-struck accents. 
“A woman in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. A rude woman. 
She scuttled by me on the stairs — she did. Here’s the room, and 
no woman in it. Give us a Prayer-book !” cried Mrs. Wragge, turn- 
ing deadly pale, and letting her whole remaining collection of par- 
cels fall about her in a little cascade of commodities. “ I want to 
read something Good. I want to think of my latter end. I’ve 
seen a Ghost !” 

“Nonsense!” said Magdalen. “You’re dreaming; the shopping 
has been too much for you. Go into your own room and take your 
bonnet off.” 

“ I’ve heard tell of ghosts in night-gowns, ghosts in sheets, and 
ghosts in chains,” proceeded Mrs. Wragge, standing petrified in 


NO NAME. 


255 


her own magic circle of linen-drapers’ parcels. “ Here’s a worse 
ghost than any of ’em — a ghost in a gray cloak and a poke bonnet. 
I know what it is,” continued Mrs. Wragge, melting into penitent 
tears. “ It’s a judgment on me for being so happy away from the 
captain. It’s a judgment on me for haying been down at heel in 
half the shops in London, first with one shoe and then with the oth- 
er, all the time I’ve been out. I’m a sinful creature. Don’t let go 
of me — whatever you do, my dear, don’t let go of me !” She caught 
Magdalen fast by the arm, and fell into another trembling fit at the 
bare idea of being left by herself. 

The one remaining chance in such an emergency as this was to 
submit to circumstances. Magdalen took Mrs. Wragge to a chair; 
having first placed it in such a position as might enable her to turn 
her back on her traveling-companion, while she removed the false 
eyebrows by the help of a little water. “ Wait a minute there,” she 
said, “ and try if you can compose yourself while I bathe my head.” 

“ Compose myself?” repeated Mrs. Wragge. “ How am I to com- 
pose myself when my head feels off my ' shoulders ? The worst 
Buzzing I ever had with the Cookery-book was nothing to the 
Buzzing I’ve got now with the Ghost. Here’s a miserable end to a 
holiday! You may take me back again, my dear, whenever you 
like — I’ve had enough of it already !” 

Having at last succeeded in removing the eyebrows, Magdalen 
was free to combat the unfortunate impression produced on her 
companion’s mind by every weapon of persuasion which her inge- 
nuity could employ. 

The attempt proved useless. Mrs. Wragge persisted — on evi- 
dence which, it may be remarked in parenthesis, would have satis- 
fied many wiser ghost-seers than herself — in believing that she had 
been supernaturally favored by a visitor from the world of spirits. 
All that Magdalen could do was to ascertain, by cautious investiga- 
tion, that Mrs. Wragge had not been quick enough to identify the 
supposed ghost with the character of the old North-country lady in 
the Entertainment. Having satisfied herself on this point, she had 
no resource but to leave the rest to the natural incapability of re- 
taining impressions — unless those impressions were perpetually re- 
newed — which was one of the characteristic infirmities of her com- 
panion’s weak mind. After fortifying Mrs. Wragge by reiterated 
assurances that one appearance (according to all the laws and regu- 
lations of ghosts) meant nothing unless it was immediately followed 
by two more — after patiently leading back her attention to the par- 
cels dropped on the floor and on the stairs — and after promising to 
keep the door of communication ajar between the two rooms if Mrs. 
Wragge would engage on her side to retire to her own chamber, 
and to say no more on the terrible subject of the ghost — Magdalen 


256 


NO NAME. 


at last secured the privilege of reflecting uninterruptedly on the 
events of that memorable day. 

Two serious consequences had followed her first step forward. 
Mrs. Lecount had entrapped her into speaking in her own voice, 
and accident had confronted her with Mrs. Wragge in disguise. 

What advantage had she gained to set against these disasters? 
The advantage of knowing more of Noel Yanstone and of Mrs. Le- 
count than she might have discovered in months if she had trusted 
to inquiries made for her by others. One uncertainty which had 
hitherto perplexed her was set at rest already. The scheme she 
had privately devised against Michael Yanstone — which Captain 
Wragge’s sharp insight had partially penetrated when she first 
warned him that their partnership must be dissolved — was a 
scheme which she could now plainly see must be abandoned as 
hopeless, in the case of Michael Yanstone’s son. The father’s hab- 
its of speculation had been the pivot on which the whole machinery 
of her meditated conspiracy had been constructed to turn. No such 
vantage-ground was discoverable in the doubly sordid character of 
the son. Noel Yanstone was invulnerable on the very point which 
had presented itself in his father as open to attack. 

Having reached this conclusion, how was she to shape her future 
course ? What new means could she discover which would lead 
her secretly to her end, in defiance of Mrs. Lecount’s malicious vig- 
ilance, and Noel Yanstone’s miserly distrust ? 

She was seated before the looking-glass, mechanically combing 
out her hair, while that all-important consideration occupied her 
mind. The agitation of the moment had raised a feverish color in 
her cheeks, and had brightened the light in her large gray eyes. 
She was conscious of looking her best ; conscious how her beauty 
gained by contrast, after the removal of the disguise. Her lovely 
light brown hair looked thicker and softer than ever, now that it 
had escaped from its imprisonment under the gray wig. She twist- 
ed it this way and that, with quick, dexterous fingers ; she laid it 
in masses on her shoulders ; she threw it back from them in a heap, 
and turned sideways to see how it fell — to see her back and shoul- 
ders freed from the artificial deformities of the padded cloak. Af- 
ter a moment she faced the looking-glass once more ; plunged both 
hands deep in her hair; and, resting her elbows on the table, looked 
closer and closer at the reflection of herself, until her breath began 
to dim the glass. “ I can twist any man alive round my finger, 7 ’ 
she thought, with a smile of superb triumph, “ as long as I keep my 
looks! If that contemptible wretch saw me now — ” She shrank 
from following that thought to its end, with a sudden horror of her- 
self : she drew back from the glass, shuddering, and put her hands 
over her face. “Oh, Frank !” she murmured, “ but for you, what a 


NO NAME. 


257 


wretch I might be !” Her eager fingers snatched the little white 
silk bag from its hiding-place in her bosom ; her lips devoured it 
with silent kisses. “ My darling ! my angel ! Oh, Frank, how I 
love you !” The tears gushed into her eyes. She passionately 
dried them, restored the bag to its place, and turned her back on 
the looking-glass. “ No more of myself,” she thought ; “ no more 
of my mad, miserable self for to-day !” 

Shrinking from all further contemplation of her next step in ad- 
vance — shrinking from the fast-darkening future, with which Noel 
Vanstone was now associated in her inmost thoughts — she looked 
impatiently about the room for some homely occupation which 
might take her out of herself. The disguise which she had flung 
down between the wall and the bed recurred to her memory. It 
was impossible to leave it there. Mrs. Wragge (now occupied in 
sorting her parcels) might weary of her employment, might come in 
again at a moment’s notice, might pass near the bed, and see the 
gray cloak. What was to be done ? 

Her first thought was to put the disguise back in her trunk. 
But after what had happened, there was danger in trusting it so 
near to herself while she and Mrs. Wragge were together under the 
same roof. She resolved to be rid of it that evening, and boldly 
determined on sending it back to Birmingham. Her bonnet-box 
fitted into her trunk. She took the box out, thrust in the wig and 
cloak, and remorselessly flattened down the bonnet at the top. The 
gown (which she had not yet taken off) was her own ; Mrs. Wragge 
had been accustomed to see her in it — there was no need to send 
the gown back. Before closing the box, she hastily traced these 
lines on a sheet of paper : “ I took the inclosed things away by mis- 
take. Please keep them for me, with the rest of my luggage in your 
possession, until you hear from me again.” Putting the paper on 
the top of the bonnet, she directed the box to Captain Wragge at 
Birmingham, took it down stairs immediately, and sent the land- 
lady’s daughter away with it to the nearest Receiving - house. 
“ That difficulty is disposed of,” she thought, as she went back to 
her own room again. 

Mrs. Wragge was still occupied in sorting her parcels on her nar- 
row little bed. She turned round with a faint scream when Mag- 
dalen looked in at her. “ I thought it was the ghost again,” said 
Mrs. Wragge. “ I’m trying to take warning, my dear, by what’s 
happened to me. I’ve put all my parcels straight, just as the cap- 
tain would like to see ’em. I’m up at heel with both shoes. If I 
close my eyes to-night — which I don’t think I shall — I’ll go to sleep 
as straight as my legs will let me. And I’ll never have another holi- 
day as long as I live. I hope I shall be forgiven,” said Mrs. Wragge, 
mournfully shaking her head. “ I humbly hope I shall be forgiven.” 


258 


NO NAME. 


“Forgiven!” repeated Magdalen. “If other women wanted as 
little forgiving as you do — Well! well ! Suppose you open some 
of these parcels. Come ! I want to see what you have been buying 
to-day.” 

Mrs. Wragge hesitated, sighed penitently, considered a little, 
stretched out her hand timidly toward one of the parcels, thought 
of the supernatural warning, and shrank back from her own pur- 
chases with a desperate exertion of self-control. 

“ Open this one,” said Magdalen, to encourage her: “ what is it ?” 

Mrs. Wragge’s faded blue eyes began to brighten dimly, in spite 
of her remorse; but she self-denyingly shook her head. The mas- 
ter-passion of shopping might claim his own again — but the ghost 
was not laid yet. 

“ Did you get it a bargain ?” asked Magdalen, confidentially. 

“Dirt cheap !” cried poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the 
snare, and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing had hap- 
pened. 

Magdalen kept her gossiping over her purchases for an hour or 
more, and then wisely determined to distract her attention from all 
ghostly recollections in another way by taking her out for a walk. 

As they left the lodgings, the door of Noel Yanstone’s house 
opened, and the woman-servant appeared, bent on another errand. 
She was apparently charged with a letter on this occasion, which 
she carried carefully in her hand. Conscious of having formed no 
plan yet either for attack or defense, Magdalen wondered, with a 
momentary dread, whether Mrs. Lecount had decided already on 
opening fresh communications, and whether the letter was directed 
to “ Miss Garth.” 

The letter bore no such address. Noel Yanstone had solved his 
pecuniary problem at last. The blank space in the advertisement 
was filled up, and Mrs. Lecount’s acknowledgment of the captain’s 
anonymous warning was now on its way to insertion in the Times . 


THE END OF THE THIRD SCENE. 


NO NAME. 


259 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 

I. 

Extract from the Advertising Columns of “ The Times” 

“An Unknown Friend is requested to mention (by advertise- 
ment) an address at which a letter can reach him. The receipt of 
the information which he offers will be acknowledged by a reward 
of Five Pounds.” 

II. 

From Captain Wragge to Magdalen. 

* “ Birmingham, July 2d, 1847. 

“ My dear Girl, — The box containing the articles of costumes 
which you took away by mistake has come safely to hand. Consid- 
er it under my special protection until I hear from you again. 

“ I embrace this opportunity to assure you once more of my un- 
alterable fidelity to your interests. Without attempting to intrude 
myself into your confidence, may I inquire whether Mr. Noel Van- 
stone has consented to do you justice ? I greatly fear he has de- 
clined — in which case I can lay my hand on my heart, and solemnly 
declare that his meanness revolts me. Why do I feel a foreboding 
that you have appealed to him in vain ? Why do I find myself view- 
ing this fellow in the light of a noxious insect ? We are total stran- 
gers to each other ; I have no sort of knowledge of him, except the 
knowledge I picked up in making your inquiries. Has my intense 
sympathy with your interests made my perceptions prophetic ? or, to 
put it fancifully, is there really such a thing as a former state of ex- 
istence ? and has Mr. Noel Vanstone mortally insulted me — say, in 
some other planet ? 

“ I write, my dear Magdalen, as you see, with my customary dash 
of humor. But I am serious in placing my services at your disposal. 
Don’t let the question of terms cause you an instant’s hesitation. I 
accept beforehand any terms you like to mention. If your present 
plans point that way, I am ready to squeeze Mr. Noel Vanstone, in 
your interests, till the gold oozes out of him at every pore. Pardon 
the coarseness of this metaphor. My anxiety to be of service to you 
rushes into words ; lays my meaning, in the roughs at your feet ; and 


260 


NO NAME. 


leaves your taste to polish it with the choicest ornaments of the Em 
glish language. 

“ How is my unfortunate wife ? I am afraid you find it quite im- 
possible to keep her up at heel, or to mold her personal appearance 
into harmony with the eternal laws of symmetry and order. Does 
she attempt to be too familiar with you ? I have always been ac- 
customed to check her, in this respect. She has never been permit- 
ted to call me any thing but Captain; and on the rare occasions 
since our union, when circumstances may have obliged her to ad- 
dress me by letter, her opening form of salutation has been rigidly 
restricted to 4 Dear Sir.’ Accept these trifling domestic particulars 
as suggesting hints which may be useful to you in managing Mrs. 
Wragge ; and believe me, in anxious expectation of hearing from 
you again, Devotedly yours, 

“ Horatio Wragge.” 


III. 

From Norah to Magdalen. 

[ Forwarded , with the Two Letters that follow it ) from the Pbst-office, Bir- 
9 mingham . ] 

“ Westmoreland House, Kensington, July 1st. 

“ My dearest Magdalen, — When you write next (and pray write 
soon !) address your letter to me at Miss Garth’s. I have left my 
situation ; and some little time may elapse before I find another. 

“ Now it is all over, I may acknowledge to you, my darling, that I 
was not happy. I tried hard to win the affection of the two little 
girls I had to teach ; but they seemed, I am sure I can’t tell why, to 
dislike me from the first. Their mother I have no reason to com- 
plain of. But their grandmother, who was really the ruling power 
in the house, made my life very hard to me. My inexperience in 
teaching was a constant subject of remark with her ; and my diffi- 
culties with the children were always visited on me as if they had 
been entirely of my own making. I tell you this, so that you may 
not suppose I regret having left my situation. Far from it, my love 
— I am glad to be out of the house. 

“ I have saved a little money, Magdalen ; and I should so like -to 
spend it in staying a few days with you. My heart aches for a sight 
of my sister ; my ears are weary for the sound of her voice. A word 
from you, telling me where we can meet, is all I want. Think of it 
— pray think of it. 

“ Don’t suppose I am discouraged by this first check. There are 
many kind people in the world ; and some of them may employ me 
next time. The way to happiness is often very hard to find ; hard- 
er, I almost think, for women than for men. But if we oniy try pa- 
tiently, and try long enough, we reach it at last — in Heaven, if not 


NO NAME. 


261 


on earth. I think my way now is the way which leads to seeing 
you again. Don’t forget that, my love, the next time you think of 

“ Norah.” 


IV. 

From Miss Garth to Magdalen. 

“ Westmoreland House, July 1st. 

“My dear Magdalen, — You have no useless remonstrances to 
apprehend at the sight of my handwriting. My only object in this 
letter is to tell you something which I know your sister will not tell 
you of her own accord. She is entirely ignorant that I am writing 
to you. Keep her in ignorance, if you wish to spare her unnecessary 
anxiety, and me unnecessary distress. 

“ Norah’s letter, no doubt, tells you that she has left her situation. 
I feel it my painful duty to add that she has left it on your account. 

“The matter occurred in this manner. Messrs. Wyatt, Pendril, 
and Gwilt are the solicitors of the gentleman in whose family Norah 
was employed. The life which you have chosen for yourself was 
known as long ago as December last to all the partners. You were 
discovered performing in public at Derby by the person who had 
been employed to trace you at York; and that discovery was com- 
municated by Mr. Wyatt to Norah’s employer a few days since, in 
reply to direct inquiries about you on that gentleman’s part. His 
wife and his mother (who lives with him) had expressly desired 
that he would make those inquiries; their doubts having been 
aroused by Norah’s evasive answers when they questioned her 
about her sister. You know Norah too well to blame her for this. 
Evasion was the only escape your present life had left her, from tell- 
ing a downright falsehood. 

“ That same day, the two ladies of the family, the elder and the 
younger, sent for your sister, and told her they had discovered that 
you were a public performer, roaming from place to place in the 
country under an assumed name. They were just enough not to 
blame Norah for this ; they were just enough to acknowledge that 
her conduct had been as irreproachable as I had guaranteed it 
should be when I got her the situation. But, at the same time, 
they made it a positive condition of her continuing in their employ- 
ment that she should never permit you to visit her at their house, 
or to meet her and walk out with her when she was in attendance 
on the children. Your sister — who has patiently borne all hardships 
that fell on herself — instantly resented the slur cast on you. She 
gave her employers warning on the spot. High words followed, 
and she left the house that evening. 

“ I have no wish to distress you by representing the loss of this 
situation in the light of a disaster. Norah was not so happy in it 


262 


NO NAME. 


as I had hoped and believed she would be. It was impossible for 
me to know beforehand that the children were sullen and intract- 
able, or that the husband’s mother was accustomed to make her 
domineering disposition felt by every one in the house. I will 
readily admit that Norah is well out of this situation. But the 
harm does not stop here. For all you and I know to the contrary, 
the harm may go on. What has happened in this situation may 
happen in another. Your way of life, however pure your conduct 
may be — and I will do you the justice to believe it pure — is a sus- 
picious way of life to all respectable people. I have lived long 
enough in this world to know that the sense of Propriety, in nine 
Englishwomen out of ten, makes no allowances and feels no pity. 
Norah’s next employers may discover you ; and Norah may throw 
up a situation next time which we may never be able to find for her 
again. 

“I leave you to consider this. My child, don’t think I am hard 
on you. I am jealous for your sister’s tranquillity. If you will for- 
get the past, Magdalen, and come back, trust to your old governess 
to forget it too, and to give you the home which your father and 
mother once gave her. Your friend, my dear, always, 

“ Harriet Garth.” 


V. 

From Francis Clare , Jun., to Magdalen. 

“Shanghai, China, April 23d, 1847. 

“My dear Magdalen, — I have deferred answering your letter, 
in consequence of the distracted state of my mind, which made me 
unfit to write to you. I am still unfit, but I feel I ought to delay no 
longer. My sense of honor fortifies me, and I undergo the pain of 
writing this letter. 

“ My prospects in China are all at an end. The Firm to which I 
was brutally consigned, as if I was a bale of merchandise, has worn 
out my patience by a series of petty insults ; and I have felt com- 
pelled, from motives of self-respect, to withdraw my services, which 
were undervalued from the first. My returning to England under 
these circumstances is out of the question. I have been too cruelly 
used in my own country to wish to go back to it, even if I could. 
I propose embarking on board a private trading-vessel in these seas 
in a mercantile capacity, to make my way, if I can, for myself. 
How it will end, or what will happen to me next, is more than I 
can say. It matters little what becomes of me. I am a wanderer 
and an exile, entirely through the fault of others. The unfeeling 
desire at home to get rid of me has accomplished its object. I am 
got rid of for good. 

“ There is only one more sacrifice left for me to make — the sacri- 


NO NAME. 


263 


fice of my heart’s dearest feelings. With no prospects before me, 
with no chance of coming home, what hope can I feel of performing 
my engagement to yourself? None! A more selfish man than I 
am might hold you to that engagement; a less considerate man 
than I am might keep you waiting for years — and to no purpose 
after all. Cruelly as they have been trampled on, my feelings are 
too sensitive to allow me to do this. I write it with the tears in 
my eyes — you shall not link your fate to an outcast. Accept these 
heart-broken lines as releasing you from your promise. Our en- 
gagement is at an end. 

“ The one consolation which supports me in bidding you farewell 
is, that neither of us is to blame. You may have acted weakly, un- 
der my father’s influence, but I am sure you acted for the best. No- 
body knew what the fatal consequences of driving me out of En- 
gland would be but myself— and I was not listened to. I yielded 
to my father, I yielded to you ; and this is the end of it ! 

“ I am suffering too acutely to write more. May you never know 
what my withdrawal from our engagement has cost me ! I beg you 
will not blame yourself. It is not your fault that I have had all 
my energies misdirected by others — it is not your fault that I have 
never had a fair chance of getting on in life. Forget the deserted 
wretch who breathes his heartfelt prayers for your happiness, and 
who will ever remain your friend and well-wisher. 

“ Francis Clare, Jun.” 

VI. 

From Francis Clare , Sen ., to Magdalen. 

[Inclosing the preceding Letter .] 

“ I always told your poor father my son was a Fool, but I never 
knew he was a Scoundrel until the mail came in from China. I 
have every reason to believe that he has left his employers under 
the most disgraceful circumstances. Forget him from this time 
forth, as I do. When you and I last set eyes on each other, you be- 
haved well to me in this business. All I can now say in return, I 
do say. My girl, I am sorry for you. F. C.” 

VII. 

From Mrs. Wragge to her Husband. 

“Dear sir for mercy’s sake come here and help us She had a 
dreadful letter I don’t know what yesterday but she read it in bed 
and when I went in with her breakfast I found her dead and if the 
doctor had not been two doors off nobody else could have brought 
her to life again and she sits and looks dreadful and won’t speak a 
word her eyes frighten me so I shake from head to foot oh please 
do come I keep things as tidy as I can and I do like her so and she 


264 


NO NAME. 


used to be so kind to me and the landlord says he’s afraid she’ll de- 
stroy herself I wish I could write straight but I do shake so your 
dutiful wife matilda wragge excuse faults and beg you on my knees 
come and help us the Doctor good man will put some of his own 
writing into this for fear you can’t make out mine and remain once 
more your dutiful wife matilda wragge.” 

Added by the Doctor . 

11 Sir, — I beg to inform you that I was yesterday called into a 
neighbor’s in Vauxhall Walk to attend a young lady who had been 
suddenly taken ill. I recovered her with great difficulty from one 
of the most obstinate fainting-fits I ever remember to have met with. 
Since that time she has had no relapse, but there is apparently some 
heavy distress weighing on her mind which it has hitherto been 
found impossible to remove. She sits, as I am informed, perfectly 
silent, and perfectly unconscious of what goes on about her, for 
hours together, with a letter in her hand which she will allow no- 
body to take from her. If this state of depression continues, very 
distressing mental consequences may follow ; and I only do my 
duty in suggesting that some relative or friend should interfere who 
has influence enough to rouse her. Your obedient servant, 

“Richard Jarvis, M.R.C.S.” 


VIII. 

From Norah to Magdalen. 

“July 6th. 

“ For God’s sake, write me one line to say if you are still at Bir- 
mingham, and where I can find you there ! I have just heard from 
old Mr. Clare. Oh, Magdalen, if you have no pity on yourself, have 
some pity on me ! The thought of you alone among strangers, the 
thought of you heart-broken under this dreadful blow, never leaves 
me for an instant. No words can tell how I feel for you ! My own 
love, remember the better days at home before that cowardly villain 
stole his way into your heart ; remember the happy time at Combe- 
Raven when we were always together. Oh, don’t, don’t treat me 
like a stranger ! We are alone in the world now — let me come and 
comfort you, let me be more than a sister to you, if I can. One line 
— only one line to tell me where I can find you !” 

IX. 

From Magdalen to Norah. 

“July 7 th. 

“ My dearest Norah, — All that your love for me can wish your 
letter has done. You, and you alone, have found your way to my 
heart. I could think again, I could feel again, after reading what 


NO NAME. 


265 


you have written to me. Let this assurance quiet your anxieties. 
My mind lives and breathes once more — it was dead until I got 
your letter. 

“ The shock I have suffered has left a strange quietness in me. I 
feel as if I had parted from my former self— as if the hopes once so 
dear to me had all gone back to some past time from which I am 
now far removed. I can look at the wreck of my life more calmly, 
Norah, than you could look at it if we were both together again. 
I can trust myself already to write to Frank. 

“ My darling, I think no woman ever knows how utterly she has 
given herself up to the man she loves — until that man has ill-treat- 
ed her. Can you pity my weakness if I confess to having felt a 
pang at my heart when I read that part of your letter which calls 
Frank a coward and a villain ? Nobody can despise me for this as 
I despise myself. I am like a dog who crawls back and licks the 
master’s hand that has beaten him. But it is so — I would confess 
it to nobody but you — indeed, indeed it is so. He has deceived 
and deserted me; he has written me a cruel farewell — but don’t 
call him a villain ! If he repented and came back to me, I would 
die rather than marry him now — but it grates on me to see that 
word coward written against him in your hand ! If he is weak of 
purpose, who tried his weakness beyond what it could bear? Do 
you think this would have happened if Michael Vanstone had not 
robbed us of our own, and forced Frank away from me to China ? 
In a week from to-day the year of waiting would have come to an 
end, and I should have been Frank’s wife, if my marriage portion 
had not been taken from me. 

“ You will say, after what has happened, it is well that I have 
escaped. My love ! there is something perverse in my heart, which 
answers, No ! Better have been Frank’s wretched wife than the 
free woman I am now. 

“ I have not written to him. He sends me no address at which I 
could write, even if I would. But I have not the wish. I will wait 
before I send him my farewell. If a day ever comes when I have 
the fortune which my father once promised I should bring to him, 
do you know what I would do with it? I would send it all to 
Frank, as my revenge on him for his letter; as the last farewell 
word on my side to the man who has deserted me. Let me live 
for that day 1 Let me live, Norah, in the hope of better times for 
you , which is all the hope I have left. When I think of your hard 
life, I can almost feel the tears once more in my weary eyes. I can 
almost think I have come back again to my former self. 

“You will not think me hard-hearted and ungrateful if I say that 
we must wait a little yet before we meet ? I want to be more fit to 
see you than I am now. I want to put Frank farther away from 


266 


NO NAME. 


me, and to bring you nearer still. Are these good reasons ? I don’t 
know — don’t ask me for reasons. Take the kiss I have put for you 
here, where the little circle is drawn on the paper; and let that 
bring us together for the present till I write again. Good-bye, my 
love. My heart is true to you, Norah, but I dare not see you yet. 

“ Magdalen.” 


X. 

From Magdalen to Miss Garth. 

“My dear Miss Garth, — I have been long in answering your 
letter ; but you know what has happened, and you will forgive me. 

“All that I have to say may be said in few words. You may de- 
pend on my never making the general Sense of Propriety my enemy 
again : I am getting knowledge enough of the world to make it 
my accomplice next time. Norah will never leave another situation 
on my account — my life as a public performer is at an end. It was 
harmless enough, God knows — I may live, and so may you, to mourn 
the day when I parted from it — but I shall never return to it again. 
It has left me, as Frank has left me, as all my better thoughts have 
left me — except my thoughts of Norah. 

“Enough of myself! Shall I tell you some news to brighten this 
dull letter ? Mr. Michael Yanstone is dead, and Mr. Noel Yanstone 
has succeeded to the possession of my fortune and Norah’s. He is 
quite worthy of his inheritance. In his father’s place, he would 
have ruined us as his father did. 

“ I have no more to say that you would care to know. Don’t be 
distressed about me. I am trying to recover my spirits — I am try~ 
ing to forget the poor deluded girl who was foolish enough to be 
fond of Frank in the old days at Combe-Raven. Sometimes a pang 
comes which tells me the girl won’t be forgotten — but not often. 

“ It was very kind of you, when you wrote to such a lost creature 
as I am, to sign yourself— always my friend. ‘ Always * is a bold 
word, my dear old governess ! I wonder whether you will ever 
want to recall it ? It will make no difference if you do, in the grati- 
tude I shall always feel for the trouble you took with me when I 
was a little girl. I have ill repaid that trouble — ill repaid your 
kindness to me in after life. I ask your pardon and your pity. 
The best thing you can do for both of us is to forget me. Affection- 
ately yours, Magdalen. 

“ P. S. — I open the envelope to add one line. For God’s sake, 
don’t show this letter to Norah 1” 


NO NAME. 


267 


XI. 

From Magdalen to Captain Wragge. 

“Vauxhall Walk, July 17th. 

“ If I am not mistaken, it was arranged that I should write to you 
at Birmingham as soon as I felt myself composed enough to think 
of the future. My mind is settled at last, and I am now able to ac- 
cept the services which you have unreservedly offered to me. 

“ I beg you will forgive the manner in which I received you on 
your arrival in this house, after hearing the news of my sudden ill- 
ness. I was quite incapable of controlling myself — I was suffering 
an agony of mind which for the time deprived me of my senses. It 
is only your due that I should now thank you for treating me with 
great forbearance at a time when forbearance was mercy. 

“I will mention what I wish you to do as plainly and briefly as 
I can. 

“ In the first place, I request you to dispose (as privately as possi- 
ble) of every article of costume used in the dramatic Entertainment. 
I have done with our performances forever ; and I wish to be set 
free from every thing which might accidentally connect me with 
them in the future. The key of my box is inclosed in this letter. 

“ The other box, which contains my own dresses, you will be kind 
enough to forward to this house. I do not ask you to bring it your- 
self, because I have a far more important commission to intrust to 
you. 

“ Referring to the note which you left for me at your departure, I 
conclude that you have by this time traced^Mr. Noel Yanstone from 
Vauxhall Walk to the residence which he is now occupying. If you 
have made the discovery — and if you are quite sure of not having 
drawn the attention either of Mrs. Lecount or her master to yourself 
— I wish you to arrange immediately for my residing (with you and 
Mrs. Wragge) in the same town or village in which Mr. Noel Yan- 
stone has taken up his abode. I write this, it is hardly necessary to 
say, under the impression that, wherever he may now be living, he is 
settled in the place for some little time. 

“ If you can find a small furnished house for me on these condi- 
tions which is to be let by the month, take it for a month certain to 
begin with. Say that it is for your wife, your niece, and yourself, 
and use any assumed name you please, as long as it is a name that 
can be trusted to defeat the most suspicious inquiries. I leave this 
to your experience in such matters. The secret of who we really are 
must be kept as strictly as if it was a secret on which our lives de- 
pend. 

“Any expenses to which you may be put in carrying out my 
wishes I will immediately repay. If you easily find the sort of house 


268 


NO NAME. 


I want, there is no need for your returning to London to fetch us. 
We can join you as soon as we know where to go. The house must 
be perfectly respectable, and must be reasonably near to Mr. Noel 
Vanstone’s present residence, wherever that is. 

“You must allow me to be silent in this letter as to the object 
which I have now in view. I am unwilling to risk an explanation 
in writing. When all our preparations are made, you shall hear 
what I propose to do from my own lips ; and I shall expect you to 
tell me plainly, in return, whether you will or will not give me the 
help I want on the best terms which I am able to offer you. 

“ One word more before I seal up this letter. 

“If any opportunity falls in your way after you have taken the 
house, and before we join you, of exchanging a few civil words ei- 
ther with Mr. Noel Yanstone or Mrs. Lecount, take advantage of it. 
It is very important to my present object that we should become ac- 
quainted with each other — as the purely accidental result of our be- 
ing near neighbors. I want you to smooth the way toward this end 
if you can, before Mrs. Wragge and I come to you. Pray throw 
away no chance of observing Mrs. Lecount, in particular, very care- 
fully. Whatever help you can give me at the outset in blindfolding 
that woman’s sharp eyes will be the most precious help I have ever 
received at your hands. 

“There is no need to answer this letter immediately — unless I 
have written it under a mistaken impression of what you have ac- 
complished since leaving London. I have taken our lodgings on 
for another week ; and I can wait to hear from you until you are 
able to send me such news as I wish to receive. You may be quite 
sure of my patience for the future, under all possible circumstances. 
My caprices are at an end, and my violent temper has tried your for- 
bearance for the last time. Magdalen.” 


XII. 

From Captain Wragge to Magdalen. 

“North Shingles Villa, Aldborough, Suffolk, July 22d. 

“My dear Girl, — Your letter has charmed and touched me. 
Your excuses have gone straight to my heart; and your confidence 
in my humble abilities has followed in the same direction. The 
pulse of the old militia-man throbs with pride as he thinks of the 
trust you have placed in him, and vows to deserve it. Don’t be 
surprised at this genial outburst. All enthusiastic natures must ex- 
plode occasionally; and my form of explosion is — Words. 

“ Every thing you wanted me to do is done. The house is taken ; 
the name is found ; and I am personally acquainted with Mrs. Le- 
ccunt. After reading this general statement, you will naturally be 


NO NAME. 


269 


interested in possessing your mind next of the accompanying details. 
Here they are, at your service : 

“ The day after leaving you in London, I traced Mr. Noel Vanstone 
to this curious little sea-side snuggery. One of his father’s innumer- 
able bargains was a house at Aldborough — a rising watering-place, 
or Mr. Michael Vanstone would not have invested a farthing in it. 
In this house the despicable little miser, who lived rent tree in Lon- 
don, now lives, rent free again, on the coast of Suffolk. He is set- 
tled in his present abode for the summer and autumn ; and you and 
Mrs. Wragge have only to join me here, to be established five doors 
away from him in this elegant villa. I have got the whole house 
for three guineas a week, with the option of remaining through the 
autumn at the same price. In a fashionable watering-place, such a 
residence would have been cheap at double the money. 

“ Our new name has been chosen with a wary eye to your sugges- 
tions. My books — I hope you have not forgotten my Books ? — con- 
tain, under the heading of SJcins To Jump Inio , a list of individuals 
retired from this mortal scene, with whose names, families, and cir- 
cumstances I am well acquainted. Into some of those Skins I have 
been compelled to Jump, in the exercise of my profession, at former 
periods of my career. Others are still in the condition of new 
dresses, and remain to be tried on. The Skin which will exactly fit 
us originally clothed the bodies of a family named Bygrave. I am 
in Mr. Bygrave’s skin at this moment — and it fits without a wrinkle. 
If you will oblige me by slipping into Miss Bygrave (Christian name, 
Susan); and if you will afterward push Mrs. Wragge — anyhow; 
head foremost if you like — into Mrs. Bygrave (Christian name, 
Julia), the transformation will be complete. Permit me to inform 
you that I am your paternal uncle. My worthy brother was estab- 
lished twenty years ago in the mahogany and logwood trade at 
Belize, Honduras. He died in that place ; and is buried on the 
south-west side of the local cemetery, with a neat monument of 
native wood carved by a self-taught negro artist. Nineteen months 
afterward his widow died of apoplexy at a boarding-house in Chel- 
tenham. She was supposed to be the most corpulent woman in 
England, and was accommodated on the ground-floor of the house 
in consequence of the difficulty of getting her up and down stairs. 
You are her only child ; you have been under my care since the sad 
event at Cheltenham; you are twenty-one years old on the second 
of August next ; and, corpulence excepted, you are the living image 
of your mother. I trouble you with these specimens of my intimate 
knowledge of our new family Skin, to quiet your mind on the sub- 
ject of future inquiries. Trust to me and my books to satisfy any 
amount of inquiry. In the mean time write down our new name 
and address, and see how they strike you : ‘ Mr. Bygrave, Mrs. By- 


270 


NO NAME. 


grave, Miss Bygrave ; North Shingles Villa, Aldborough.’ Upon 
my life, it reads remarkably well ! 

“ The last detail I have to communicate refers to my acquaintance 
with Mrs. Lecount. 

“We met yesterday, in the grocer’s shop here. Keeping my ears 
open, I found that Mrs. Lecount wanted a particular kind of tea 
which the man had not got, and which he believed could not be 
procured any nearer than Ipswich. I instantly saw my way to be- 
ginning an acquaintance, at the trifling expense of a journey to that 
flourishing city. ‘ I have business to-day in Ipswich,’ I said, ‘ and I 
propose returning to Alborough (if I can get back in time) this even- 
ing. Pray allow me to take your order for the tea, and to bring it 
back with my own parcels . 1 Mrs. Lecount politely declined giving 
me the trouble — I politely insisted on taking it. We fell into con- 
versation. There is no need to trouble you with our talk. The 
result of it on my mind is — that Mrs. Lecount’s one weak point, if 
she has such a thing at all, is a taste for science, implanted by her 
deceased husband, the professor. I think I see a chance here of 
working my way into her good graces, and casting a little needful 
dust into those handsome black eyes of hers. Acting on this idea 
when I purchased the lady’s tea at Ipswich, I also bought on my 
own account that far-famed pocket-manual of knowledge, ‘Joyce’s 
Scientific Dialogues.’ Possessing, as I do, a quick memory and 
boundless confidence in myself, I propose privately inflating my 
new skin with as much ready - made science as it will hold, and 
presenting Mr. Bygrave to Mrs. Lecount’s notice in the character 
of the most highly informed man she has met with since the pro- 
fessor’s death. The necessity of blindfolding that woman (to use 
your own admirable expression) is as clear to me as to you. If it 
is to be done in the way I propose, make your mind easy — Wragge, 
inflated by Joyce, is the man to do it. 

“You now have my whole budget of news. Am I, or am I not, 
worthy of your confidence in me ? I say nothing of my devouring 
anxiety to know what your objects really are — that anxiety will be 
satisfied when we meet. Never yet, my dear girl, did I long to ad- 
minister a productive pecuniary Squeeze to any human creature, as 
I long to administer it to Mr. Noel Vanstone. I say no more. Ver- 
bum sap. Pardon the pedantry of a Latin quotation, and believe 
me, Entirely yours, 

“Horatio Wragge. 

“ P.S. — I await my instructions, as you requested. You have only 
to say whether I shall return to London for the purpose of escorting 
you to this place, or whether I shall wait here to receive you. The 
house is in perfect order, the weather is charming, and the sea is as 
smooth as Mrs. Lecount’s apron. She has just passed the window, 


NO NAME. 


271 


and we have exchanged bows. A sharp woman, my dear Mag- 
dalen ; but Joyce and I together may prove a trifle too much for 
her.” 

XIII. 


Extract from the “ East Suffolk Argus” 

“Aldborough. — We notice with pleasure the arrival of visitors 
to this healthful and far-famed watering-place, earlier in the season 
than usual during the present year. Esto Perpetua is all we have 
to say. 

“Visitors’ List. — Arrivals since our last. North Shingles Villa 
— Mrs. Bygrave ; Miss Bygrave.” 


272 


NO NAME. 


THE FOURTH SCENE. 

ALDBOROUGH, SUFFOLK. 

CHAPTER I. 

The most striking spectacle presented to a stranger by the shores 
of Suffolk is the extraordinary defenselessness of the land against 
the encroachments of the sea. 

At Aldborough, as elsewhere on this coast, local traditions are, 
for the most part, traditions which have been literally drowned. 
The site of the old town, once a populous and thriving port, has al- 
most entirely disappeared in the sea. The German Ocean has swal- 
lowed up streets, market-places, jetties, and public walks ; and the 
merciless waters, consummating their work of devastation, closed, 
no longer than eighty years since, over the salt-master’s cottage at 
Aldborough, now famous in memory only as the birthplace of the 
poet Crabbe. 

Thrust back year after year by the advancing waves, the inhabit- 
ants have receded, in the present century, to the last morsel of land 
which is firm enough to be built on — a strip of ground hemmed in 
between a marsh on one side and the sea on the other. Here, trust- 
ing for their future security to certain sand-hills which the capri- 
cious waves have thrown up to encourage them, the people of Ald- 
borough have boldly established their quaint little watering-place. 
The first fragment of their earthly possessions is a low natural dike 
of shingle, surmounted by a public path which runs parallel with 
the sea. Bordering this path, in a broken, uneven line, are the villa 
residences of modem Aldborough — fanciful little houses, standing 
mostly in their own gardens, and possessing here and there, as hor- 
ticultural ornaments, staring figure-heads of ships, doing duty for 
statues among the flowers. Viewed from the low level on which 
these villas stand, the sea, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, 
appears to be higher than the land : coasting-vessels gliding by as- 
sume gigantic proportions, and look alarmingly near the windows. 
Intermixed with the houses of the better sort are buildings of other 
forms and periods. In one direction the tiny Gothic town-hall of 
old Aldborough — once the centre of the vanished port and borough 
— now stands, fronting the modern villas close on the margin of the 
sea. At another point, a wooden tower of observation, crowned by 


NO NAME. 


273 


the figure-head of a wrecked Russian vessel, rises high above the 
neighboring houses, and discloses through its scuttle- window grave 
men in dark clothing seated on the topmost story, perpetually on 
the watch — the pilots of Aldborough looking out from their tower 
for ships in want of help. Behind the row of buildings thus curi- 
ously intermingled luns the one straggling street of the town, with 
its sturdy pilots’ cottages, its moldering marine store-houses, and its 
composite shops. Toward the northern end this street is bounded 
by the one eminence visible over all the marshy flat — a low wooded 
hill, on which the church is built. At its opposite extremity the 
street leads to a deserted martello tower, and to the forlorn outly- 
ing suourb of Slaughden, between the river Aide and the sea. Such 
are the main characteristics of this curious little outpost on the 
shores of England as it appears at the present time. 

On a hot and cloudy July afternoon, and on the second day which 
had elapsed since he had written to Magdalen, Captain Wragge 
sauntered through the gate of North Shingles Villa to meet the ar- 
rival of the coach, which then connected Aldborough with the East- 
ern Counties Railway. He reached the principal inn as the coach 
drove up, and was ready at the door to receive Magdalen and Mrs. 
Wragge, on their leaving the vehicle. 

The captain’s reception of his wife was not characterized by an 
instant’s unnecessary waste of time. He looked distrustfully at her 
shoes — raised himself on tiptoe — set her bonnet straight for her with 
a sharp tug — said, in a loud whisper, “ hold your tongue ” — and left 
her, for the time being, without further notice. His welcome to 
Magdalen, beginning with the usual flow of words, stopped sudden- 
ly in the middle of the first sentence. Captain Wragge’s eye was a 
sharp one, and it instantly showed him something in the look and 
manner of his old pupil which denoted a serious change. 

There was a settled composure on her face which, except when 
she spoke, made it look as still and cold as marble. Her voice was 
softer and more equable, her eyes were steadier, her step was slower 
than of old. When she smiled, the smile came and went suddenly, 
and showed a little nervous contraction on one side of her mouth 
never visible there before. She was perfectly patient with Mrs. 
Wragge ; she treated the captain with a courtesy and consideration 
entirely new in his experience of her — but she was interested in 
nothing. The curious little shops in the back street ; the high im- 
pending sea ; the old town-hall on the beach ; the pilots, the fisher- 
men, the passing ships — she noticed all these objects as indifferently 
as if Aldborough had been familiar to her from her infancy. Even 
when the captain drew up at the garden-gate of North Shingles, 
and introduced her triumphantly to the new house, she hardly look- 


274 


NO NAME. 


ed at it. The first question she asked related not to her own resi- 
dence, but to Noel Vanstone’s. 

w How near to us does he live ?” she inquired, with the only be- 
trayal of emotion which had escaped her yet. 

Captain Wragge answered by pointing to the fifth villa from 
North Shingles, on the Slaughden side of Aldborough. Magdalen 
suddenly drew back from the garden gate as he indicated the situ- 
ation, and walked away by herself to obtain a nearer view of the 
house. 

Captain Wragge looked after her, and shook his head, discon- 
tentedly. 

“ May I speak now ?” inquired a meek voice behind him, articu- 
lating respectfully ten inches above the top of his straw hat. 

The captain turned round, and confronted his wife. The more 
than ordinary bewilderment visible in her face at once suggested to 
him that Magdalen had failed to carry out the directions in his let' 
ter; and that Mrs. Wragge had arrived at Aldborough without be- 
ing properly aware of the total transformation to be accomplished 
in her identity and her name. The necessity of setting this doubt 
at rest was too serious to be trifled with; and Captain Wragge in- 
stituted the necessary inquiries without a moment’s delay. 

“ Stand straight, and listen to me,” he began. “ I have a ques- 
tion to ask you. Do you know whose Skin you are in at this mo- 
ment ? Do you know that you are dead and buried in London ; 
and that you have risen like a phoenix from the ashes of Mrs. 
Wragge ? No ! you evidently don’t know it. This is perfectly dis- 
graceful. What is your name ?” 

“ Matilda,” answered Mrs. Wragge, in a state of the densest be- 
wilderment. 

“ Nothing of the sort !” cried the captain, fiercely. “ How dare 
you tell me your name’s Matilda ? Your name is Julia. Who am 
I ? — Hold that basket of sandwiches straight, or I’ll pitch it into the 
sea ! — Who am I ?” 

“ I don’t know,” said Mrs. Wragge, meekly taking refuge in the 
negative side of the question this time. 

“ Sit down !” said her husband, pointing to the low garden wall 
of North Shingles Villa. “ More to the right ! More still ! That 
will do. You don’t know ?” repeated the captain, sternly confront- 
ing his wife as soon as he had contrived, by seating her, to place 
her face on a level with his own. “ Don’t let me hear you say that 
a second time. Don’t let me have a woman who doesn’t know who 
I am, to operate on my beard to-morrow morning. Look at me ! 
More to the left — more still — that will do. Who am I ? I’m Mr. 
Bygrave — Christian name, Thomas. Who are you? You’re Mrs. 
Bygrave — Christian name, Julia. Who is that young lady who 


NO NAME. 


275 


traveled with you from London ? That young lady is Miss Bygrave 
— Christian name, Susan. I’m her clever uncle Tom ; and you’re 
her addle-headed aunt Julia. Say it all over to me instantly, like 
the Catechism ! What is your name ?” 

“ Spare my poor head !” pleaded Mrs. Wragge. “ Oh please spare 
my poor head till I’ve got the stage-coach out of it !” 

“ Don’t distress her,” said Magdalen, joining them at that mo- 
ment. “ She will learn it in time. Come into the house.” 

Captain Wragge shook his wary head once more. u We are be- 
ginning badly,” he said, with less politeness than usual. “ My 
wife’s stupidity stands in our way already.” 

They went into the house. Magdalen was perfectly satisfied w T ith 
all the captain’s arrangements ; she accepted the room which he 
had set apart for her ; approved of the woman servant whom he had 
engaged ; presented herself at tea-time the moment she was sum- 
moned — but still showed no interest whatever in the new scene 
around her. Soon after the table was cleared, although the day- 
light had not yet faded out, Mrs. Wragge’s customary drowsiness 
after fatigue of any kind overcame her, and she received her hus- 
band’s orders to leave the room (taking care that she left it “ up at 
heel ”), and to betake herself (strictly in the character of Mrs. By- 
grave) to bed. As soon as they were left alone, the captain looked 
hard at Magdalen, and waited to be spoken to. She said nothing. 
He ventured next on opening the conversation by a polite inquiry 
after the state of her health. “You look fatigued,” he remarked, 
in his most insinuating manner. “ I am afraid the journey has been 
too much for you.” 

“No,” she replied, looking out listlessly through the window; 
“ I am not more tired than usual. I am always weary now ; weary 
at going to bed, weary at getting up. If you would like to hear 
what I have to say to you to-night, I am willing and ready to say 
it. Can’t we go out ? It is very hot here ; and the droning of those 
men’s voices is beyond all endurance.” She pointed through the 
window to a group of boatmen idling, as only nautical men can idle, 
against the garden wall. “ Is there no quiet walk in this wretched 
place?” she asked, impatiently. “Can’t we breathe a little fresh 
air, and escape being annoyed by strangers?” 

“There is perfect solitude within half an hour’s walk of the 
house,” replied the ready captain. 

“ Very well. Come out, then.” 

With a weary sigh she took up her straw bonnet and her light 
muslin scarf from the side-table upon which she had thrown them 
on coming in, and carelessly led the way to the door. Captain 
Wragge followed her to the garden gate, then stopped, struck by a 
new idea. 


276 


NO NAME. 


“ Excuse me,” he whispered, confidentially. u In my wife’s exist- 
ing state of ignorance as to who she is, we had better not trust her 
alone in the house with a new servant. I’ll privately turn the key 
on her, in case she wakes before we come back. Safe bind, safe 
find — you know the proverb ! — I will be with you again in a moment.” 

He hastened back to the house, and Magdalen seated herself on 
the garden wall to await his return. 

She had hardly settled herself in that position, when two gentle- 
men walking together, whose approach along the public path she 
had not previously noticed, passed close by her. 

The dress of one of the two strangers showed him to be a clergy- 
man. His companion’s station in life was less easily discernible 
to ordinary observation. Practiced eyes would probably have seen 
enough in his look, his manner, and his walk, to show that he was 
a sailor. He was a man in the prime of life ; tall, spare, and muscu- 
lar; his face sun-burned to a deep brown; his black hair just turn- 
ing gray ; his eyes dark, deep, and firm — the eyes of a man with an 
iron resolution, and a habit of command. He was the nearest of 
the two to Magdalen, as he and his friend passed the place where 
she was sitting; and he looked at her with a sudden surprise at 
her beauty, with an open, hearty, undisguised admiration, which 
was too evidently sincere, too evidently beyond his own control, to 
be justly resented as insolent ; and yet, in her humor at that moment, 
Magdalen did resent it. She felt the man’s resolute black eyes 
strike through her with an electric suddenness ; and frowning at 
him impatiently, she turned away her head and looked back at the 
house. 

The next moment she glanced round again to see if he had gone 
on. He had advanced a few yards — had then evidently stopped-- 
and was now in the very act of turning to look at her once more. 
His companion, the clergyman, noticing that Magdalen appeared to 
be annoyed, took him familiarly by the arm, and, half in jest, half 
in earnest, forced him to walk on. The two disappeared round the 
corner of the next house. As they turned it, the sun-burned sailor 
twice stopped his companion again, and twice looked back. 

“A friend of yours ?” inquired Captain Wragge, joining Magdalen 
at that moment. 

“ Certainly not,” she replied ; “ a perfect stranger. He stared at 
Mie in the most impertinent manner. Does he belong to this place ?” 

“ I’ll find out in a moment,” said the compliant captain, joining 
the group of boatmen, and putting his questions right and left, with 
the easy familiarity which distinguished him. He returned in a few 
minutes with a complete budget of information. The clergyman 
was well known as the rector of a place situated some few miles in- 
land. The dark man with him was his wife’s brother, commander 


NO NAME. 


277 


of a ship in the merchant-service. He was supposed to be staying 
with his relatives, as their guest for a short time only, preparatory 
to sailing on another voyage. The clergyman’s name was Strick- 
land, and the merchant-captain’s name was Kirke; and that was 
all the boatmen knew about either of them. 

“ It is of no consequence who they are,” said Magdalen, careless- 
ly. “ The man’s rudeness merely annoyed me for the moment. Let 
us have done with him. I have something else to think of, and so 
have you. Where is the solitary walk you mentioned just now 1 
Which way do we go ?” 

The captain pointed southward toward Slaughden, and offered 
his arm. 

Magdalen hesitated before she took it. Her eyes wandered away 
inquiringly to Noel Yanstone’s house. He was out in the garden, 
pacing backward and forward over the little lawn, with his head 
high in the air, and with Mrs. Lecount demurely in attendance on 
him, carrying her master’s green fan. Seeing this, Magdalen at 
once took Captain Wragge’s right arm, so as to place herself nearest 
to the garden when they passed it on their walk. 

“ The eyes of our neighbors are on us ; and the least your niece 
can do is to take your arm,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “ Come ! 
let us go on.” 

“ They are looking this way,” whispered the captain. u Shall I 
introduce you to Mrs. Lecount ?” 

“Not to-night,” she answered. “Wait, and hear what I have to 
say to you first.” 

They passed the garden wall. Captain Wragge took off his hat 
with a smart flourish, and received a gracious bow from Mrs. Le- 
count in return. Magdalen saw the housekeeper survey her face, 
her figure, and her dress, with that reluctant interest, that distrustful 
curiosity, which women feel in observing each other. As she walked 
on beyond the house, the sharp voice of Noel Yanstone reached her 
through the evening stillness. “ A fine girl, Lecount,” she heard him 
say. “You know I am a judge of that sort of thing — a fine girl 1” 

As those words were spoken, Captain Wragge looked round at his 
companion in sudden surprise. Her hand was trembling violently 
on his arm, and her lips were fast closed with an expression of speech- 
less pain. 

Slowly and in silence the two walked on until they reached the 
southern limit of the houses, and entered on a little wilderness of 
shingle and withered grass — the desolate end of Aldborough, the 
lonely beginning of Slaughden. 

It was a dull, airless evening. Eastward was the gray majesty of 
the sea, hushed in breathless calm ; the horizon line invisibly melt- 
ing into the monotonous, misty sky ; the idle ships shadowy and still 


278 


NO NAME. 


on the idle water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and 
the grim, massive circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound 
of grass, closed the view darkly on all that lay beyond. Westward, 
a lurid streak of sunset glowed red in the dreary heaven, blackened 
the fringing trees on the far borders of the great inland marsh, and 
turned its little gleaming water-pools to pools of blood. Nearer to 
the eye, the sullen flow of the tidal river Aide ebbed noiselessly from 
the muddy banks ; and nearer still, lonely and unprosperous by the 
bleak water-side, lay the lost little port of Slaughden, with its for- 
lorn wharfs and warehouses of decaying wood, and its few scattered 
coasting-vessels deserted on the oozy river-shore. No fall of waves 
was heard on the beach, no trickling of waters bubbled audibly from 
the idle stream. Now and then the cry of a sea-bird rose from the 
region of the marsh ; and at intervals, from farm-houses far in the 
inland waste, the faint winding of horns to call the cattle home trav- 
eled mournfully through the evening calm. 

Magdalen drew her hand from the captain’s arm, and led the way 
to the mound of the martello tower. “ I am weary of walking,” she 
said. “ Let us stop and rest here.” 

She seated herself on the slope, and resting on her elbow, mechan- 
ically pulled up and scattered from her into the air the tufts of grass 
growing under her hand. After silently occupying herself in this 
way for some minutes, she turned suddenly on Captain Wragge. 
“ Do I surprise you ?” she asked, with a startling abruptness. “ Do 
you find me changed ?” 

The captain’s ready tact warned him that the time had come to 
be plain with her, and to reserve his flowers of speech for a more 
appropriate occasion. 

“ If you ask the question, I must answer it,” he replied. “ Yes, I 
do find you changed.” 

She pulled up another tuft of grass. “ I suppose you can guess 
the reason ?” she said. 

The captain was wisely silent. He only answered by a bow. 

“ I have lost all care for myself,” she went on, tearing faster and 
faster at the tufts of grass. “ Saying that is not saying much, per- 
haps, but it may help you to understand me. There are things I 
would have died sooner than do at one time — things it would have 
turned me cold to think of. I don’t care now whether I do them or 
not. I am nothing to myself; I am no more interested in myself 
than I am in these handfuls of grass. I suppose I have lost some- 
thing. What is it ? Heart ? Conscience ? I don’t know. Do you ? 
What nonsense I am talking ! Who cares what I have lost ? It has 
gone ; and there’s an end of it. I suppose my outside is the best 
side of me — and that’s left, at any rate. I have not lost my good 
looks, have I ? There ! there ! never mind answering ; don’t trou- 


NO NAME. 


279 


ble yourself to pay me compliments. I have been admired enough 
to-day. First the sailor, and then Mr. Noel Yanstone — enough foi 
any woman’s vanity, surely ! Have I any right to call myself a wom- 
an ? Perhaps not : I am only a girl in my teens. Oh me, I feel as 
if I was forty !” She scattered the last fragments of grass to the 
winds ; and, turning her back on the captain, let her head droop till 
her cheek touched the turf bank. “ It feels soft and friendly,” she 
said, nestling to it with a hopeless tenderness horrible to see. “ It 
doesn’t cast me off. Mother Earth ! The only mother I have left !” 

Captain Wragge looked at her in silent surprise. Such experi- 
ence of humanity as he possessed was powerless to sound to its 
depths the terrible self-abandonment which had burst its way to the 
surface in her reckless words — which was now fast hurrying her to 
actions more reckless still. “ Devilish odd !” he thought to himself, 
uneasily. “ Has the loss of her lover turned her brain ?” He con- 
sidered for a minute longer, and then spoke to her. “ Leave it till 
to-morrow,” suggested the captain, confidentially. “ You are a lit- 
tle tired to-night. No hurry, my dear girl — no hurry.” 

She raised her head instantly, and looked round at him with the 
same angry resolution, with the same desperate defiance of herself, 
which he had seen in her face on the memorable day at York when 
she had acted before him for the first time. “ I came here to tell 
you what is in my mind,” she said ; “ and I will tell it !” She seat- 
ed herself upright on the slope ; and clasping her hands round her 
knees, looked out steadily, straight before her, at the slowly dark- 
ening view. In that strange position, she waited until she had 
composed herself, and then addressed the captain, without turning 
her head to look round at him, in these words : 

“ When you and I first met,” she began abruptly, “ I tried hard to 
keep my thoughts to myself. I know enough by this time to know 
that I failed. When I first told you at York that Michael Vanstone 
had ruined us, I believe you guessed for yourself that I, for one, was 
determined not to submit to it. Whether you guessed or not, it is 
so. I left my friends with that determination in my mind; and I 
feel it in me now stronger, ten times stronger, than ever.” 

“ Ten times stronger than ever,” echoed the captain. “ Exactly 
so — the natural result of firmness of character.” 

“ No — the natural result of having nothing else to think of. I 
had something else to think of before you found me ill in Yauxhall 
Walk. I have nothing else to think of now. Remember that, if 
you find me for the future always harping on the same string. One 
question first. Did you guess what I meant to do on that morning 
when you showed me the newspaper, and when I read the account 
of Michael Yanstone’s death ?” 

“ Generally,” replied Captain Wragge — “ I guessed, generally, that 


280 


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you proposed dipping your hand into his purse, and taking from it 
(most properly) what was your own. I felt deeply hurt at the time 
by your not permitting me to assist you. Why is she so reserved 
with me ? (I remarked to myself) — why is she so unreasonably re- 
served ?” 

u You shall have no reserve to complain of now,” pursued Mag- 
dalen. “ I tell you plainly, if events had not happened as they did, 
you would have assisted me. If Michael Yanstone had not died, I 
should have gone to Brighton, and have found my way safely to his 
acquaintance under an assumed name. I had money enough with 
me to live on respectably for many months together. I would have 
employed that time — I would have waited a whole year, if necessa- 
ry, to destroy Mrs. Lecount’s influence over him — and I would have 
ended by getting that influence, on my own terms, into my own 
hands. I had the advantage of years, the advantage of novelty, the 
advantage of downright desperation, all on my side, and I should 
have succeeded. Before the year was out — before half the year was 
out — you should have seen Mrs. Lecount dismissed by her master, 
and you should have seen me taken into the house in her place, as 
Michael Yanstone’s adopted daughter — as the faithful friend who 
had saved him from an adventuress in his old age. Girls no older 
than I am have tried deceptions as hopeless in appearance as mine, 
and have carried them through to the end. I had my story ready ; 
I had my plans all considered ; I had the weak point in that old 
man to attack in my way, which Mrs. Lecount had found out before 
me to attack in hers, and I tell you again I should have succeeded.” 

“ I think you would,” said the captain. “ And what next ?” 

a Mr. Michael Yanstone would have changed his man of business 
next. You would have succeeded to the place; and those clever 
speculations on which he was so fond of venturing would have cost 
him the fortunes of which he had robbed my sister and myself. To 
the last farthing, Captain Wragge, as certainly as you sit there, to 
the last farthing ! A bold conspiracy, a shocking deception — wasn’t 
it ? I don’t care ! Any conspiracy, any deception, is justified to 
my conscience by the yile law which has left us helpless. You talk- 
ed of my reserve just now. Have I dropped it at last ? Have I 
spoken out at the eleventh hour ?” 

The captain laid his hand solemnly on his heart, and launched 
himself once more on his broadest flow of language. 

“ You fill me with unavailing regret,” he said. “ If that old man 
had lived, what a crop I might have reaped from him ! What enor- 
mous transactions in moral agriculture it might have been my priv- 
ilege to carry on! Ars longa ,” said Captain Wragge, pathetically 
drifting into Latin — “vita brevis! Let us drop a tear on the lost 
opportunities of the past, and try what the present can do to con- 


NO NAME. 


281 


sole us. One conclusion is clear to my mind— the experiment you 
proposed to try with Mr. Michael Yanstone is totally hopeless, my 
dear girl, in the case of his son. His son is impervious to all com- 
mon forms of pecuniary temptation. You may trust my solemn as- 
surance,” continued the captain, speaking with an indignant recol- 
lection of the answer to his advertisement in the Times , “when I 
inform you that Mr. Noel Yanstone is emphatically the meanest of 
mankind.” 

“I can trust my own experience as well,” said Magdalen. “I 
have seen him, and spoken to him — I know him better than you do. 
Another disclosure, Captain Wragge, for your private ear! I sent 
you back certain articles of costume when they had served the pur- 
pose for which I took them to London. That purpose was to find 
my way to Noel Yanstone in disguise, and to judge for myself of 
Mrs. Lecount and her master. I gained my object; and I tell you 
again, I know the two people in that house yonder whom we have 
now to deal with better than you do.” 

Captain Wragge expressed the profound astonishment, and asked 
the innocent questions appropriate to the mental condition of a per- 
son taken completely by surprise. 

“Well,” he resumed, when Magdalen had briefly answered him, 
“ and what is the result on your own mind ? There must be a re- 
sult, or we should not be here. You see your way ? Of course, my 
dear girl, you see your way ?” 

“ Yes,” she said, quickly. “ I see my way.” 

The captain drew a little nearer to her, with eager curiosity ex- 
pressed in every line of his vagabond face. 

“ Go on,” he said, in an anxious whisper ; “ pray go on.” 

She looked out thoughtfully into the gathering darkness, with- 
out answering, without appearing to have heard him. Her lips 
closed, and her clasped hands tightened mechanically round her 
knees. 

“There is no disguising the fact,” said Captain Wragge, warily 
rousing her into speaking to him. “ The son is harder to deal with 
than the father — ” 

“ Not in my way,” she interposed, suddenly. 

“Indeed!” said the captain. “Well! they say there is a short 
cut to every thing, if we only look long enough to find it. You 
have looked long enough, I suppose, and the natural result has fol- 
lowed — you have found it.” 

“I have not troubled myself to look; I have found it without 
looking.” 

“The deuce you have!” cried Captain Wragge, in great perplexi- 
ty. “ My dear girl, is my view of your present position leading me 
altogether astray ? As I understand it, here is Mr. Noel Yanstone 


282 


NO NAME. 


in possession of your fortune and your sister’s, as his father was, 
and determined to keep it, as his father was ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ And here are you — quite helpless to get it by persuasion — quite 
helpless to get it by law — just as resolute in his case as you were in 
his father’s, to take it by stratagem in spite of him ?” 

“Just as resolute. Not for the sake of the fortune — mind that ! 
For the sake of the right.” 

“Just so. And the means of coming at that right which were 
hard with the father — who was not a miser — are easy with the son, 
who is ?” 

“ Perfectly easy.” 

“Write me down an Ass for the first time in my life !” cried the 
captain, at the end of his patience. “ Hang me if I know what you 
mean !” 

She looked round at him for the first time — looked him straight 
and steadily in the face. 

“ I will tell you what I mean,” she said. “ I mean to marry him.” 

Captain Wragge started up on his knees, and stopped on them, 
petrified by astonishment. 

“ Remember what I told you,” said Magdalen, looking away from 
him again. “ I have lost all care for myself. I have only one end 
in life now, and the sooner I reach it — and die — the better. If—” 
She stopped, altered her position a little, and pointed with one hand 
to the fast-ebbing stream beneath her, gleaming dim in the darken- 
ing twilight — “ if I had been what I once was, I would have thrown 
myself into that river sooner than do what I am going to do now. 
As it is, I trouble myself no longer; I weary my mind with no more 
schemes. The short way and the vile way lies before me. I take 
it, Captain Wragge, and marry him.” 

“ Keeping him in total ignorance of who you are ?” said the cap- 
tain, slowly rising to his feet, and slowly moving round, so as to 
see her face. “ Marrying him as my niece, Miss Bygrave ?” 

“As your niece, Miss Bygrave.” 

“ And after the marriage — ?” His voice faltered, as he began the 
question, and he left it unfinished. 

“ After the marriage,” she said, “ I shall stand in no further need 
of your assistance.” 

The captain stooped as she gave him that answer, looked close at 
her, and suddenly drew back, without uttering a word. He walked 
away some paces, and sat down again doggedly on the grass. If 
Magdalen could have seen his face in the dying light, his face would 
have startled her. For the first time, probably, since his boyhood, 
Captain Wragge had changed color. He was deadly pale. 

“ Have you nothing to say to me ?” she asked. “Perhaps you are 



CAPTAIN WRAGGB STARTED UP ON HIS KNEES, AND STOPPED ON THEM, 

PETRIFIED BY ASTONISHMENT. 





NO NAME. 


285 


waiting to hear what terms I have to offer ? These are my terms : 
I pay all our expenses here ; and when we part, on the day of the 
marriage, you take a farewell gift away with you of two hundred 
pounds. Do you promise me your assistance on those condi- 
tions ?” 

“ What am I expected to do ?” he asked, with a furtive look at 
her, and a sudden distrust in his voice. 

“ You are expected to preserve my assumed character and your 
own,” she answered, “ and you are to prevent any inquiries of Mrs. 
Lecount’s from discovering who I really am. I ask no more. The 
rest is my responsibility — not yours.” 

“ I have nothing to do with what happens — at any time, or in any 
place — after the marriage ?” 

“ Nothing whatever.” 

“ I may leave you at the church door if I please ?” 

“ At the church door, with your fee in your pocket.” 

“ Paid from the money in your own possession ?” 

“ Certainly ! How else should I pay it ?” 

Captain Wragge took off his hat, and passed his handkerchief 
over his face with an air of relief. 

“ Give me a minute to consider it,” he said. 

“As many minutes as you like,” she rejoined, reclining on the 
bank in her former position, and returning to her former occupation 
of tearing up the tufts of grass and flinging them out into the air. 

The captain’s reflections were not complicated by any unnecessary 
divergences from the contemplation of his own position to the con- 
templation of Magdalen’s. Utterly incapable of appreciating the 
injury done her by Frank’s infamous treachery to his engagement — 
an injury which had severed her, at one cruel blow, from the aspira- 
tion which, delusion though it was, had been the saving aspiration 
of her life — Captain Wragge accepted the simple fact of her despair 
just as he found it, and then looked straight to the consequences of 
the proposal which she had made to him. 

In the prospect before the marriage he saw nothing more serious 
involved than the practice of a deception, in no important degree 
different — except in the end to be attained by it — from the decep- 
tions which his vagabond life had long since accustomed him to 
contemplate and to carry out. In the prospect after the marriage 
he dimly discerned, through the ominous darkness of the future, 
the lurking phantoms of Terror and Crime, and the black gulfs be- 
hind them of Ruin and Death. A man of boundless audacity and 
resource, within his own mean limits ; beyond those limits, the cap- 
tain was as deferentially submissive to the majesty of the law as the 
most harmless man in existence; as cautious in looking after his 


286 


NO NAME. 


own personal safety as the veriest coward that ever walked the 
earth. But one serious question now filled his mind. Could he, on 
the terms proposed to him, join the conspiracy against Noel Van- 
stone up to the point of the marriage, and then withdraw from it, 
without risk of involving himself in the consequences which his ex- 
perience told him must certainly ensue ? 

Strange as it may seem, his decision in this emergency was main- 
ly influenced by no less a person than Noel Vanstone himself. The 
captain might have resisted the money-offer which Magdalen had 
made to him — for the profits of the Entertainment had filled his 
pockets with more than three times two hundred pounds. But the 
prospect of dealing a blow in the dark at the man who had esti- 
mated his information and himself at the value of a five-pound note 
proved too much for his caution and his self-control. On the small 
neutral ground of self-importance, the best men and the worst meet 
on the same terms. Captain Wragge’s indignation, when he saw 
the answer to his advertisement, stooped to no retrospective esti- 
mate of his own conduct : he was as deeply offended, as sincerely 
angry as if he had made a perfectly honorable proposal, and had 
been rewarded for it by a personal insult. He had been too full of 
his own grievance to keep it out of his first letter to Magdalen. He 
had more or less forgotten himself on every subsequent occasion 
when Noel Vanstone’s name was mentioned. And in now finally 
deciding the course he should take, it is not too much to say that 
the motive of money receded, for the first time in his life, into the 
second place, and the motive of malice carried the day. 

“ I accept the terms,” said Captain Wragge, getting briskly on 
his legs again. “ Subject, of course, to the conditions agreed on 
between us. We part on the wedding-day. I don’t ask where you 
go : you don’t ask where I go. From that time forth we are stran- 
gers to each other.” 

Magdalen rose slowly from the mound. A hopeless depression, a 
sullen despair, showed itself in her look and manner. She refused 
the captain’s offered hand ; and her tones, when she answered him, 
were so low that he could hardly hear her. 

u We understand each other,” she said; “and we can now go 
back. You may introduce me to Mrs. Lecount to-morrow.” 

“I must ask a few questions first,” said the captain, gravely. 
“There are more risks to be run in this matter, and more pitfalls 
in our way, than you seem to suppose. I must know the whole his- 
tory of your morning call on Mrs. Lecount before I put you and that 
woman on speaking terms with each other.” 

“Wait till to-morrow,” she broke out impatiently. “Don’t mad- 
den me by talking about it to-night.” 


NO NAME. 


287 


The captain said no more. They turned their faces toward Aid- 
borough, and walked slowly back. 

By the time they reached the houses night had overtaken them. 
Neither moon nor stars were visible. A faint noiseless breeze blow- 
ing from the land had come with the darkness. Magdalen paused 
on the lonely public walk to breathe the air more freely. After a 
while she turned her face from the breeze and looked out toward 
the sea. The immeasurable silence of the calm waters, lost in the 
black void of night, was awful. She stood looking into the dark- 
ness, as if its mystery had no secrets for her — she advanced toward 
it slowly, as if it drew her by some hidden attraction into itself. 

“I am going down to the sea,” she said to her companion. 
“ Wait here, and I will come back.” 

He lost sight of her in an instant ; it was as if the night had swal- 
lowed her up. He listened, and counted her footsteps by the crash- 
ing of them on the shingle in the deep stillness. They retreated 
slowly, farther and farther away into the night. Suddenly the 
sound of them ceased. Had she paused on her course, or had she 
reached one of the strips of sand left bare by the ebbing tide ? 

He waited, and listened anxiously. The time passed, and no 
sound reached him. He still listened, with a growing distrust of 
the darkness. Another moment, and there came a sound from the 
invisible shore. Far and faint from the beach below, a long cry 
moaned through the silence. Then all was still once more. 

In sudden alarm, he stepped forward to descend to the beach, and 
to call to her. Before he could cross the path, footsteps rapidly ad- 
vancing caught his ear. He waited an instant, and the figure of a 
man passed quickly along the walk between him and the sea. It 
was too dark to discern any thing of the stranger’s face ; it was only 
possible to see that he was a tall man — as tall as that officer in the 
merchant-service whose name was Kirke. 

The figure passed on northward, and was instantly lost to view. 
Captain Wragge crossed the path, and, advancing a few steps down 
the beach, stopped and listened again. The crash of footsteps on 
the shingle caught his ear once more. Slowly, as the sound had 
left him, that sound now came back. He called, to guide her to him. 
She came on till he could just see her — a shadow ascending the 
shingly slope, and growing out of the blackness of the night. 

“ You alarmed me,” he whispered, nervously. “ I was afraid some- 
thing had happened. I heard you cry out as if you were in pain.” 

“ Did you ?” she said, carelessly. “ I was in pain. It doesn’t mat- 
ter — it’s over now.” 

Her hand mechanically swung something to and fro as she an- 
swered him. It was the little white silk bag which she had always 
kept hidden in her bosom up to this time. One of the relics which 


288 


NO NAME. 


it held — one of the relics which she had not had the heart to part 
with before — was gone from its keeping forever. Alone, on a strange 
shore, she had torn from her the fondest of her virgin memories, the 
dearest of her virgin hopes. Alone, on a strange shore, she had 
taken the lock of Frank’s hair from its once-treasured place, and 
had cast it away from her to the sea and the night. 


CHAPTER II. 

The tall man who had passed Captain Wragge in the dark pro- 
ceeded rapidly along the public walk, struck off across a little waste 
patch of ground, and entered the open door of the Aldborough Ho- 
tel. The light in the passage, falling full on his face as he passed 
it, proved the truth of Captain Wragge’s surmise, and showed the 
stranger to be Mr. Kirke, of the merchant-service. 

Meeting the landlord in the passage, Mr. Kirke nodded to him 
with the familiarity of an old customer. “ Have you got the paper ?” 
he asked ; “ I want to look at the visitors’ list.” 

“ I have got it in my room, sir,” said the landlord, leading the way 
into a parlor at the back of the house. “Are there any friends of 
yours staying here, do you think ?” 

Without replying, the seaman turned to the list as soon as the 
newspaper was placed in his hand, and ran his finger down it, name 
by name. The finger suddenly stopped at this line : “ Sea-view Cot- 
tage ; Mr. Noel Vanstone.” Kirke of the merchant-service repeated 
the name to himself, and put down the paper thoughtfully. 

“ Have you found any body you know, captain ?” asked the land- 
lord. 

“ I have found a name I know — a name my father used often to 
speak of in his time. Is this Mr. Vanstone a family man ? Do you 
know if there is a young lady in the house ?” 

“ I can’t say, captain. My wife will be here directly : she is sure 
to know. It must have been some time ago, if your father knew 
this Mr. Vanstone ?” 

“It was some time ago. My father knew a subaltern officer of 
that name when he was with his regiment in Canada. It would be 
curious if the person here turned out to be the same man, and if 
that young lady was his daughter.” 

“Excuse me, captain — but the young lady seems to hang a little 
on your mind,” said the landlord, with a pleasant smile. 

Mr. Kirke looked as if the form which his host’s good-humor had 
just taken was not quite to his mind. He returned abruptly to the 
subaltern officer and the regiment in Canada. “ That poor fellow* 


NO NAME. 


289 


story was as miserable a one as ever I heard,” he said, looking back 
again absently at the visitors’ list. 

“Would there be any harm in telling it, sir?” asked the landlord. 
“ Miserable or not, a story’s a story, when you know it to be true.” 

Mr. Kirke hesitated. u I hardly think I should be doing right to 
tell it,” he said. “ If this man, or any relations of his, are still alive, 
it is not a story they might like strangers to know. All I can tell 
you is, that my father was the salvation of that young officer under 
very dreadful circumstances. They parted in Canada. My father 
remained with his regiment ; the young officer sold out and returned 
to England, and from that moment they lost sight of each other. It 
would be curious if this Yanstone here was the same man. It would 
be curious — ” 

He suddenly checked himself just as another reference to “ the 
young lady ” was on the point of passing his lips. At the same mo- 
ment the landlord’s wife came in, and Mr. Kirke at once transferred 
his inquiries to the higher authority in the house. 

“Do you know any thing of this Mr. Yanstone who is down here 
on the visitors’ list ?” asked the sailor. “ Is he an old man ?” 

“He’s a miserable little creature to look at,” replied the landlady; 
“but he’s not old, captain.” 

“ Then he is not the man I mean. Perhaps he is the man’s son ? 
Has he got any ladies with him ?” 

The landlady tossed her head, and pursed up her lips disparagingly. 

“ He has a housekeeper with him,” she said. “ A middle-aged 
person — not one of my sort. I dare say I’m wrong — but I don’t like 
a dressy woman in her station of life.” 

Mr. Kirke began to look puzzled. “ I must have made some mis- 
take about the house,” he said. “ Surely there’s a lawn cut octagon- 
shape at Sea-view Cottage, and a white flag-staff in the middle of 
the gravel-walk ?” 

“ That’s not Sea Yiew, sir ! It’s North Shingles you’re talking of. 
Mr. Bygrave’s. His wife and his niece came here by the coach to- 
day. His wife’s tall enough to be put in a show, and the worst- 
dressed woman I ever set eyes on. But Miss Bygrave is worth 
looking at, if I may venture to say so. She’s the finest girl, to my 
mind, we’ve had at Aldborough for many a long day. I wonder 
who they are ! Do you know the name, captain ?” 

“ No,” said Mr. Kirke, with a shade of disappointment on his 
dark, weather-beaten face; “ I never heard the name before.” 

After replying in those words, he rose to take his leave. The 
landlord vainly invited him to drink a parting glass ; the landlady 
vainly pressed him to stay another ten minutes, and try a cup of tea. 
He only replied that his sister expected him, and that he must re- 
turn to the parsonage imme^tely. 


290 


NO NAME. 


On leaving the hotel, Mr. Kirke set his face westward, and walked 
inland along the high-road as fast as the darkness would let him. 

“ Bygrave ?” he thought to himself. “ Now I know her name, 
how much am I the wiser for it ! If it had been Yanstone, my fa- 
ther’s son might have had a chance of making acquaintance with 
her.” He stopped, and looked back in the direction of Aldborough. 
“ What a fool I am !” he burst out suddenly, striking his stick on 
the ground. “ I was forty last birthday.” He turned and went on 
again faster than ever — his head down; his resolute black eyes 
searching the darkness on the land as they had searched it many a 
time on the sea from the deck of his ship. 

After more than an hour’s walking he reached a village, with a 
primitive little church and parsonage nestled together in a hollow. 
He entered the house by the back way, and found his sister, the 
clergyman’s wife, sitting alone over her work in the parlor. 

“ Where is your husband, Lizzie ?” he asked, taking a chair in a 
corner. 

“William has gone out to see a sick person. He had just time 
enough before he went,” she added, with a smile, “ to tell me about 
the young lady ; and he declares he will never trust himself at Ald- 
borough with you again until you are a steady, married man.” She 
stopped, and looked at her brother more attentively than she had 
looked at him yet. “ Robert !” she said, laying aside her work, and 
suddenly crossing the room to him. “You look anxious, you look 
distressed. William only laughed about your meeting with the 
young lady. Is it serious ? Tell me ; what is she like ?” 

He turned his head away at the question. 

She took a stool at his feet, and persisted in looking up at him. 
“ Is it serious, Robert ?” she repeated, softly. 

Kirke’s weather-beaten face was accustomed to no concealments 
— it answered for him before he spoke a word. “ Don’t tell your 
husband till I am gone,” he said, with a roughness quite new in his 
sister’s experience of him. “ I know I only deserve to be laughed 
at ; but it hurts me, for all that.” 

“ Hurts you ?” she repeated, in astonishment. 

“You can’t think me half such a fool, Lizzie, as I think myself,” 
pursued Kirke, bitterly. “A man at my age ought to know better. 
I didn’t set eyes on her for as much as a minute altogether; and 
there I have been, hanging about the place till after nightfall, on 
the chance of seeing her again — skulking, I should have called it, 
if I had found one of my men doing what I have been doing my- 
self. I believe I’m bewitched. She’s a mere girl, Lizzie — I doubt 
if she’s out of her teens — I’m old enough to be her father. It’s all 
one ; she stops in my mind in spite of me. I’ve had her face look- 
ing at me, through the pitch darkness, every step of the way to this 


NO NAME. 


291 


house ; and it’s looking at me now — as plain as I see yours, and 
plainer.” 

He rose impatiently, and began to walk backward and forward in 
the room. His sister looked after him, with surprise as well as sym- 
pathy expressed in her face. From his boyhood upward she had 
always been accustomed to see him master of himself. Years since, 
in the failing fortunes of the family, he had been their example and 
their support. She had heard of him in the desperate emergencies 
of a life at sea, when hundreds of his fellow-creatures had looked 
to his steady self-possession for rescue from close-threatening death 
— and had not looked in vain. Never, in all her life before, had his 
sister seen the balance of that calm and equal mind lost as she saw 
it lost now. 

“How can you talk so unreasonably about your age and your- 
self?” she said. “ There is not a woman alive, Robert, who is good 
enough for you. What is her name ?” 

“ Bygrave. Do you know it ?” 

“ No. But I might soon make acquaintance with her. If we only 
had a little time before us ; if I could only get to Aldborough and 
see her — but you are going away to-morrow ; your ship sails at the 
end of the week.” 

“ Thank God for that !” said Kirke, fervently. 

“Are you glad to be going away?” she asked, more and more 
amazed at him. 

“ Right glad, Lizzie, for my own sake. If I ever get to my senses 
again, I shall find my way back to them on the deck of my ship. 
This girl has got between me and my thoughts already : she sha’n’t 
go a step further, and get between me and my duty. I’m deter- 
mined on that. Fool as I am, I have sense enough left not to trust 
myself within easy hail of Aldborough to-morrow morning. I’m 
good for another twenty miles of walking, and I’ll begin my journey 
back to-night.” 

His sister started up, and caught him fast by the arm. “ Rob- 
ert!” she exclaimed; “you’re not serious? You don’t mean to 
leave us on foot, alone in the dark ?” 

“ It’s only saying good-bye, my dear, the last thing at night in- 
stead of the first thing in the morning,” he answered, with a smile. 
“ Try and make allowances for me, Lizzie. My life has been passed 
at sea; and I’m not used to having my mind upset in this way. 
Men ashore are used to it ; men ashore can take it easy. I can’t. 
If I stopped here, I shouldn’t rest. If I waited till to-morrow, I 
should only be going back to have another look at her. I don’t 
want to feel more ashamed of myself than I do already. I want to 
fight my way back to my duty and myself, without stopping to 
think twice about it. Darkness is nothing to me — I’m used to 


292 


NO NAME. 


darkness. I have got the high-road to walk on, and I can’t lose 
my way. Let me go, Lizzie ! The only sweetheart I have any busi- 
ness with at my age is my ship. Let me get back to her !” 

His sister still kept her hold of his arm, and still pleaded with him 
to stay till the morning. He listened to her with perfect patience 
and kindness, but she never shook his determination for an instant. 

“ What am I to say to William ?” she pleaded. “ What will he 
think when he comes back and finds you gone ?” 

“ Tell him I have taken the advice he gave us in his sermon last 
Sunday. Say I have turned my back on the world, the flesh, and 
the devil.” 

“ How can you talk so, Robert ! And the boys too — you promised 
not to go without bidding the boys good-bye.” 

“ That’s true. I made my little nephews a promise, and I’ll keep 
it.” He kicked off his shoes, as he spoke, on the mat outside the 
door. “ Light me up stairs, Lizzie ; I’ll bid the two boys good-bye 
without waking them.” 

She saw the uselessness of resisting him any longer ; and, taking 
the candle, went before him up stairs. 

The boys — both young children — were sleeping together in the 
same bed. The youngest was his uncle’s favorite, and was called 
by his uncle’s name. He lay peacefully asleep, with a rough little 
toy ship hugged fast in his arms. Kirke’s eyes softened as he stole 
on tiptoe to the child’s side, and kissed him with the gentleness of 
a woman. “ Poor little man !” said the sailor, tenderly. “ He is as 
fond of his ship as I was at his age. I’ll cut him out a better one 
when I come back. Will you give me my nephew one of these 
days, Lizzie, and will you let me make a sailor of him ?” 

“ Oh, Robert, if you were only married and happy, as I am !” 

“ The time has gone by, my dear. I must make the best of it as 
I am, with my little nephew there to help me.” 

He left the room. His sister’s tears fell fast as she followed him 
into the parlor. “ There is something so forlorn and dreadful in 
your leaving us like this,” she said. “ Shall I go to Aldborough 
to-morrow, Robert, and try if I can get acquainted with her for your 
sake ?” 

“ No !” he replied. “ Let her be. If it’s ordered that I am to see 
that girl again, I shall see her. Leave it to the future, and you 
leave it right.” He put on his shoes, and took up his hat and stick. 
“I won’t overwalk myself,” he said, cheerfully. “If the coach 
doesn’t overtake me on the road, I can wait for it where I stop to 
breakfast. Dry your eyes, my dear, and give me a kiss.” 

She was like her brother in features and complexion, and she had 
a touch of her brother’s spirit ; she dashed away the tears, and took 
her leave of him bravely. 


NO NAME. 


298 


“ I shall be back in a year’s time,” said Kirke, falling into his old 
sailor-like way at the door. ‘ ‘ I’ll bring you a China shawl, Lizzie, 
and a chest of tea for your store-room. Don’t let the boys forget 
me, and don’t think I’m doing wrong to leave you in this way. I 
know I am doing right. God bless you and keep you, my dear — 
and your husband, and your children ! Good-bye !” 

He stooped and kissed her. She ran to the door to look after 
him. A puff of air extinguished the candle, and the black night 
shut him out from her in an instant. 

Three days afterward the first-class merchantman Deliverance , 
Kirke, commander, sailed from London for the China Sea. 


CHAPTER III. 

The threatening of storm and change passed away with the night. 
When morning rose over Aldborough, the sun was master in the 
blue heaven, and the waves were rippling gayly under the summer 
breeze. 

At an hour when no other visitors to the watering-place were yet 
astir, the indefatigable Wragge appeared at the door of North Shin- 
gles Villa, and directed his steps northward, with a neatly-bound 
copy of “Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues” in his hand. Arriving at 
the waste ground beyond the houses, he descended to the beach 
and opened his book. The interview of the past night had sharp- 
ened his perception of the difficulties to be encountered in the com- 
ing enterprise. He was now doubly determined to try the charac- 
teristic experiment at which he had hinted in his letter to Magdalen, 
and to concentrate on himself — in the character of a remarkably 
well-informed man -the entire interest and attention of the formi- 
dable Mrs. Lecount. 

Having taken his dose of ready-made science (to use his own ex- 
pression) the first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, Cap- 
tain Wragge joined his small family circle at breakfast-time, inflated 
with information for the day. He observed that Magdalen’s face 
showed plain signs of a sleepless night. She made no complaint : 
her manner was composed, and her temper perfectly under control. 
Mrs. Wragge — refreshed by some thirteen consecutive hours of un- 
interrupted repose — was in excellent spirits, and up at heel (for a 
wonder) with both shoes. She brought with her into the room 
several large sheets of tissue-paper, cut crisply into mysterious and 
many-varying forms, which immediately provoked from her husband 
tha short and sharp question, “ What have you got there ?” 

Y Patterns, captain,” said Mrs. Wragge, in timidly conciliating 


294 


NO NAME. 


tones. “ I went shopping in London, and bought an Oriental Cash- 
mere Robe. It cost a deal of money; and I’m going to try ana 
save, by making it myself. I’ve got my patterns, and my dress- 
making directions written out as plain as print. I’ll be very tidy, 
captain ; I’ll keep in my own corner, if you’ll please to give me one ; 
and whether my head Buzzes, or whether it don’t, I’ll sit straight 
at my work all the same.” 

“ You will do your work,” said the captain, sternly, “ when you 
know who you are, who I am, and who that young lady is — not be- 
fore. Show me your shoes ! Good. Show me your cap ! Good. 
Make the breakfast.” 

When breakfast was over, Mrs. Wragge received her orders to re- 
tire to an adjoining room, and to wait there until her husband came 
to release her. As soon as her back was turned, Captain Wragge 
at once resumed the conversation which had been suspended, by 
Magdalen’s own desire, on the preceding night. The questions he 
now put to her all related to the subject of her visit in disguise to 
Noel Yanstone’s house. They were the questions of a thoroughly 
clear-headed man — short, searching, and straight to the point. In 
less than half an hour’s time he had made himself acquainted with 
every incident that had happened in Vauxhall Walk. 

The conclusions which the captain drew, after gaining his infor- 
mation, were clear and easily stated. 

On the adverse side of the question, he expressed his conviction 
that Mrs. Lecount had certainly detected her visitor to be disguised ; 
that she had never really left the room, though she might have 
opened and shut the door ; and that on both the occasions, there- 
fore, when Magdalen had been betrayed into speaking in her own 
voice, Mrs. Lecount had heard her. On the favorable side of the 
question, he was perfectly satisfied that the painted face and eye- 
lids, the wig, and the padded cloak had so effectually concealed 
Magdalen’s identity, that she might in her own person defy the 
housekeeper’s closest scrutiny, so far as the matter of appearance 
was concerned. The difficulty of deceiving Mrs. Lecount’s ears, as 
well as her eyes, was, he readily admitted, not so easily to be dis- 
posed of. But looking to the fact that Magdalen, on both the oc- 
casions when she had forgotten herself, had spoken in the heat of 
anger, he was of opinion that her voice had every reasonable chance 
of escaping detection, if she carefully avoided all outbursts of tem- 
per for the future, and spoke in those more composed and ordi- 
nary tones which Mrs. Lecount had not yet heard. Upon the 
whole, the captain was inclined to pronounce the prospect hopeful, 
if one serious obstacle were cleared away at the outset — that obsta- 
cle being nothing less than the presence on the scene of action of 
Mrs. Wragge, 


NO NAME. 


295 


To Magdalen’s surprise, when the course of her narrative brought 
her to the story of the ghost, Captain Wragge listened with the air 
of a man who was more annoyed than amused by what he heard. 
When she had done, he plainly told her that her unlucky meeting 
on the stairs of the lodging-house with Mrs. Wragge was, in his 
opinion, the most serious of all the accidents that had happened in 
Vauxhall Walk. 

“ I can deal with the difficulty of my wife’s stupidity,” he said, 
“ as I have often dealt with it before. I can hammer her new iden- 
tity into her head, but I can’t hammer the ghost out of it. We 
have no security that the woman in the gray cloak and poke bonnet 
may not come back to her recollection at the most critical time, and 
under the most awkward circumstances. In plain English, my dear 
girl, Mrs. Wragge is a pitfall under our feet at every step we take.” 

“ If we are aware of the pitfall,” said Magdalen, “we can take our 
measures for avoiding it. What do you propose ?” 

“ I propose,” replied the captain, “ the temporary removal of Mrs. 
Wragge. Speaking purely in a pecuniary point of view, I can’t 
afford a total separation from her. You have often read of very 
poor people being suddenly enriched by legacies reaching them 
from remote and unexpected quarters ? Mrs. Wragge’s case, when 
I married her, was one of these. An elderly female relative shared 
the favors of fortune on that occasion with my wife ; and if I only 
keep up domestic appearances, I happen to know that Mrs. Wragge 
will prove a second time profitable to me on that elderly relative’s 
death. But for this circumstance, I should probably long since 
have transferred my wife to the care of society at large — in the agree- 
able conviction that if I didn’t support her, somebody else would. 
Although I can’t afford to take this course, I see no objection to 
having her comfortably boarded, and lodged out of our way for the 
time being — say, at a retired farm-house, in the character of a lady 
in infirm mental health. You would find the expense trifling ; / 
should find the relief unutterable. What do you say ? Shall I pack 
her up at once, and take her away by the next coach ?” 

“ No !” replied Magdalen, firmly. “ The poor creature’s life is hard 
enough already ; I won’t help to make it harder. She was affec- 
tionately and truly kind to me when I was ill, and I won’t allow her 
to be shut up among strangers while I can help it. The risk of 
keeping her here is only one risk more. I will face it, Captain 
Wragge, if you won’t.” 

“ Think twice,” said the captain, gravely, “ before you decide on 
keeping Mrs. Wragge.” 

“ Once is enough,” rejoined Magdalen. “ I won’t have her sent 
away.” 

“ Very good,” said the captain, resignedly. “ I never interfere 


296 


n^kname. 


with questions of sentiment. But I have a word to say on my own 
behalf. If my services are to be of any use to you, I can’t have my 
hands tied at starting. This is serious. I won’t trust my wife and 
Mrs. Lecount together. I’m afraid, if you're not, and I make it a con- 
dition that, if Mrs. Wragge stops here, she keeps her room. If you 
think her health requires it, you can take her for a walk early in the 
morning, or late in the evening ; but you must never trust her out 
with the servant, and never trust her out by herself. I put the mat- 
ter plainly, it is too important to be trifled with. What do you say 
— yes or no ?” 

“ I say yes,” replied Magdalen, after a moment’s consideration. 
“ On the understanding that I am to take her out walking, as you 
propose.” 

Captain Wragge bowed, and recovered his suavity of manner. 
“ What are our plans ?” he inquired. “ Shall we start our enterprise 
this afternoon ? Are you ready for your introduction to Mrs. Le- 
count and her master ?” 

“ Quite ready.” 

“Good again. We will meet them on the Parade, at their usual 
hour for going out — two o’clock. It is not twelve yet. I have two 
hours before me — just time enough to fit my wife into her new Skin. 
The process is absolutely necessary, to prevent her compromising us 
with the servant. Don’t be afraid about the results ; Mrs. Wragge 
has had a copious selection of assumed names hammered into her 
head in the course of her matrimonial career. It is merely a ques- 
tion of hammering hard enough — nothing more. I think we have 
settled every thing now. Is there any thing I can do before two 
o’clock ? Have you any employment for the morning ?” 

“ No,” said Magdalen. “ I shall go back to my own room, and 
try to rest.” 

“You had a disturbed night, I am afraid?” said the captain, po- 
litely opening the door for her. 

“ I fell asleep once or twice,” she answered, carelessly. “ I sup- 
pose my nerves are a little shaken. The bold black eyes of that 
man who stared so rudely at me yesterday evening seemed to be 
looking at me again in my dreams. If we see him to-day, and if he 
annoys me any more, I must trouble you to speak to him. We will 
meet here again at two o’clock. Don’t be hard with Mrs. Wragge ; 
teach her what she must learn as tenderly as you can.” 

With those words she left him, and went up stairs. 

She lay down on her bed with a heavy sigh, and tried to sleep. It 
was useless. The dull weariness of herself which now possessed her 
was not the weariness which finds its remedy in repose. She rose 
again and sat by the window, looking out listlessly over the sea. 

A weaker nature than hers would not have felt the shock of 


NO NAME. 


297 


Frank’s desertion as she had felt it — as she was feeling it still. A 
weaker nature would have found refuge in indignation and comfort 
in tears. The passionate strength of Magdalen’s love clung desper- 
ately to the sinking wreck of its own delusion — clung, until she tore 
herself from it, by main force of will. All that her native pride, her 
keen sense of wrong could do, was to shame her from dwelling on 
the thoughts which still caught their breath of life from the undy- 
ing devotion of the past ; which still perversely ascribed Frank’s 
heartless farewell to any cause but the inborn baseness of the man 
who had written it. , The woman never lived yet who could cast a 
true-love out of her heart because the object of that love was un- 
worthy of her. All she can do is to struggle against it in secret — to 
sink in the contest if she is weak ; to win her way through it if she 
is strong, by a process of self-laceration which is, of all moral reme- 
dies applied to a woman’s nature, the most dangerous and the most 
desperate ; of all moral changes, the change that is surest to mark 
her for life. Magdalen’s strong nature had sustained her through 
the struggle ; and the issue of it had left her what she now was. 

After sitting by the window for nearly an hour, her eyes looking 
mechanically at the view, her mind empty of all impressions, and 
conscious of no thoughts, she shook off the strange waking stupor 
that possessed her, and rose to prepare herself for the serious busi- 
ness of the day. 

She went to the wardrobe and took down from the pegs two 
bright, delicate muslin dresses, which had been made for summer 
wear at Combe-Raven a year since, and which had been of too lit- 
tle value to be worth selling when she parted with her other pos- 
sessions. After placing these dresses side by side on the bed, she 
looked into the wardrobe once more. It only contained one other 
summer dress — the plain alpaca gown which she had worn during 
her memorable interview with Noel Yanstone and Mrs. Lecount. 
This she left in its place, resolving not to wear it — less from any 
dread that the housekeeper might recognize a pattern too quiet to 
be noticed, and too common to be remembered, than from the con- 
viction that it was neither gay enough nor becoming enough for 
her purpose. After taking a plain white muslin scarf, a pair of light 
gray kid gloves, and a garden-hat of Tuscan straw, from the drawers 
of the wardrobe, she locked it, and put the key carefully in her 
pocket. 

Instead of at once proceeding to dress herself, she sat idly look- 
ing at the two muslin gowns ; careless which she wore, and yet in- 
consistently hesitating which to choose. “ What does it matter !” 
she said to herself, with a reckless laugh ; “ I am equally worthless 
in my own estimation, whichever I put on.” She shuddered, as if 
the sound of her own laughter had startled her, and abruptly caught 


298 


NO NAME. 


up the dress which lay nearest to her hand. Its colors were blue* 
and white — the shade of blue which best suited her fair complex- 
ion. She hurriedly put on the gown, without going near her look- 
ing-glass. For the first time in her life she shrank from meeting 
the reflection of herself — except for a moment, when she arranged 
her hair under her garden-hat, leaving the glass again immediately. 
She drew her scarf over her shoulders and fitted on her gloves, with 
her back to the toilet-table. “ Shall I paint ?” she asked herself, 
feeling instinctively that she was turning pale. “ The rouge is still 
left in my box. It can’t make my face more false than it is already.” 
She looked round toward the glass, and again turned away from it. 
“ No !” she said. “ I have Mrs. Lecount to face as well as her mas- 
ter. No paint.” After consulting her watch, she left the room and 
went down stairs again. It wanted ten minutes only of two o’clock. 

Captain Wragge was waiting for her in the parlor — respectable, 
in a frock-coat, a stiff summer cravat, and a high white hat ; speck- 
lessly and cheerfully rural, in a buff waistcoat, gray trowsers, and 
gaiters to match. His collars were higher than ever, and he carried 
a brand-new camp-stool in his hand. Any tradesman in England 
who had seen him at that moment would have trusted him on the 
spot. 

“Charming!” said the captain, paternally surveying Magdalen 
when she entered the room. “ So fresh and cool ! A little too 
pale, my dear, and a great deal too serious. Otherwise perfect. 
Try if you can smile.” 

“ When the time comes for smiling,” said Magdalen, bitterly, 
“trust my dramatic training for any change of face that may be 
necessary. Where is Mrs. Wragge ?” 

“Mrs. Wragge has learned her lesson,” replied the captain, “and 
is rewarded by my permission to sit at work in her own room. I 
sanction her new fancy for dress-making, because it is sure to ab- 
sorb all her attention, and to keep her at home. There is no fear 
of her finishing the Oriental Robe in a hurry, for there is no mistake 
in the process of making it which she is not certain to commit. 
She will sit incubating her gown — pardon the expression — like a 
hen over an addled egg. I assure you, her new whim relieves me. 
Nothing could be more convenient, under existing circumstances.” 

He strutted away to the window, looked out, and beckoned to 
Magdalen to join him. “ There they are !” he said, and pointed to 
the Parade. 

Noel Vanstone slowly walked by, as she looked, dressed in a com- 
plete suit of old-fashioned nankeen. It was apparently one of the 
days when the state of his health was at the worst. He leaned on 
Mrs. Lecount’s arm, and was protected from the sun by a light um- 
brella which she held over him. The housekeeper — dressed to per 


NO NAME. 


299 


fection, as usual, in a quiet, lavender-colored summer gown, a black 
mantilla, an unassuming straw bonnet, and a crisp blue veil — escort- 
ed her invalid master with the tenderest attention ; sometimes di- 
recting his notice respectfully to the various objects of the sea view ; 
sometimes bending her head in graceful acknowledgment of the 
courtesy of passing strangers on the Parade, who stepped aside to 
let the invalid pass by. She produced a visible effect among the 
idlers on the beach. They looked after her with unanimous in- 
terest, and exchanged confidential nods of approval which said, as 
plainly as words could have expressed it, “ A very domestic person ! 
a truly superior woman !” 

Captain Wragge’s party-colored eyes followed Mrs. Lecount with 
a steady, distrustful attention. “ Tough work for us there” he 
whispered in Magdalen’s ear ; “ tougher work than you think, be- 
fore we turn that woman out of her place.” 

“ Wait,” said Magdalen, quietly. “ Wait and see.” 

She walked to the door. The captain followed her without mak- 
ing any further remark. “ I’ll wait till you’re married,” he thought 
to himself — “ not a moment longer, offer me what you may.” 

At the house door Magdalen addressed him again. 

“ We will go that way,” she said, pointing southward, “ then turn, 
and meet them as they come back.” 

Captain Wragge signified his approval of the arrangement, and 
followed Magdalen to the garden gate. As she opened it to pass 
through, her attention was attracted by a lady, with a nursery-maid 
and two little boys behind her, loitering on the path outside the 
garden wall. The lady started, looked eagerly, and smiled to her- 
self as Magdalen came out. Curiosity had got the better of Kirke’s 
sister, and she had come to Aldborough for the express purpose of 
seeing Miss Bygrave. 

Something in the shape of the lady’s face, something in the ex- 
pression of her dark eyes, reminded Magdalen of the merchant-cap- 
tain whose uncontrolled admiration had annoyed her on the previous 
evening. She instantly returned the stranger’s scrutiny by a frown- 
ing, ungracious look. The lady colored, paid the look back with 
interest, and slowly walked on. 

“ A hard, bold, bad girl,” thought Kirke’s sister. “ What could 
Robert be thinking of to admire her? I am almost glad he is 
gone. I hope and trust he will never set eyes on Miss Bygrave 
again.” 

“ What boors the people are here !” said Magdalen to Captain 
Wragge. “ That woman was even ruder than the man last night. 
She is like him in the face. I wonder who she is?” 

“I’ll find out directly,” said the captain. “ We can’t be too cau 
tious about strangers,” He at once appealed to his friends, the boat- 


300 


NO NAME. 


men. They were close at hand, and Magdalen heard the questions 
and answers plainly. 

u How are you all this morning?” said Captain Wragge, in his 
easy jocular way. “And how’s the wind ? Nor’ -west and by west, 
is it ? Very good. Who is that lady ?” 

“ That’s Mrs. Strickland, sir.” 

“ Ay ! ay ! The clergyman’s wife and the captain’s sister. Where’s 
the captain to-day ?” 

“ On his way to London, I should think, sir. His ship sails for 
China at the end of the week.” 

China ! As that one word passed the man’s lips, a pang of the old 
sorrow struck Magdalen to the heart. Stranger as he was, she be- 
gan to hate the bare mention of the merchant-captain’s name. He 
had troubled her dreams of the past night ; and now, when she was 
most desperately and recklessly bent on forgetting her old home- 
existence, he had been indirectly the cause of recalling her mind to 
Frank. 

“ Come !” she said, angrily, to her companion. “ What do we care 
about the man or his ship ? Come away.” 

“ By all means,” said Captain Wragge. “ As long as we don’t find 
friends of the Bygraves, what do we care about any body ?” 

They walked on southward for ten minutes or more, then turned 
and walked back again to meet Noel Yanstone and Mrs. Lecount. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Captain Wragge and Magdalen retraced their steps until they 
were again within view of North Shingles Villa before any signs 
appeared of Mrs. Lecount and her master. At that point the house- 
keeper’s lavender-colored dress, the umbrella, and the feeble little 
figure in nankeen walking under it, became visible in the distance. 
The captain slackened his pace immediately, and issued his direc- 
tions to Magdalen for her conduct at the coming interview in these 
words : 

“ Don’t forget your smile,” he said. “ In all other respects you 
will do. The walk has improved your complexion, and the hat be- 
comes you. Look Mrs. Lecount steadily in the face; show no em- 
barrassment when you speak ; and if Mr. Noel Vanstone pays you 
pointed attention, don’t take too much notice of him while his 
housekeeper’s eye is on you. Mind one thing ! I have been at 
Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues all the morning; and I am quite serious 
in meaning to give Mrs. Lecount the full benefit of my studies. If 
I can’t contrive to divert her attention from you and her master, I 


NO NAME. 


301 


won’t give sixpence for our chance of success. Small-talk won’t 
succeed with that woman ; compliments won’t succeed ; jokes won’t 
succeed — ready-made science may recall the deceased professor, and 
ready-made science may do. We must establish a code of signals 
to let you know what I am about. Observe this camp-stool. When 
I shift it from my left hand to my right, I am talking Joyce. When 
I shift it from my right hand to my left, I am talking Wragge. In 
the first case, don’t interrupt me — I am leading up to my point. In 
the second case, say any thing you like ; my remarks are not of the 
slightest consequence. Would you like a rehearsal ? Are you 
sure you understand? Very good — take my arm, and look happy. 
Steady ! here they are.” 

The meeting took place nearly midway between Sea- view Cottage 
and North Shingles. Captain Wragge took off his tall white hat, 
and opened the interview immediately on the friendliest terms. 

“ Good-morning, Mrs. Lecount,” he said, with the frank and cheer- 
ful politeness of a naturally sociable man. “ Good morning, Mr. 
Vanstone ; I am sorry to see you suffering to-day. Mrs. Lecount, 
permit me to introduce my niece — my niece, Miss By grave. My 
dear girl, this is Mr. Noel Vanstone, our neighbor at Sea- view Cot- 
tage. We must positively be sociable at Aldborough, Mrs. Lecount. 
There is only one walk in the place (as my niece remarked to me 
just now, Mr. Vanstone) ; and on that walk we must all meet every 
time we go out. And why not? Are we formal people on either 
side? Nothing of the sort; we are just the reverse. You possess 
the Continental facility of manner, Mr. Vanstone — I match you with 
the blunt cordiality of an old-fashioned Englishman — the ladies 
mingle together in harmonious variety, like flowers on the same bed 
— and the result is a mutual interest in making our sojourn at the 
sea-side agreeable to each other. Pardon my flow of spirits; par- 
don my feeling so cheerful and so young. The Iodine in the sea- 
air, Mrs. Lecount — the notorious effect of the Iodine in the sea-air !” 

“ You arrived yesterday, Miss By grave, did you not ?” said the 
housekeeper, as soon as the captain’s deluge of language had come 
to an end. 

She addressed those words to Magdalen with a gentle motherly 
interest in her youth and beauty, chastened by the deferential ami- 
ability which became her situation in Noel Vanstone’s household. 
Not the faintest token of suspicion or surprise betrayed itself in her 
face, her voice, or her manner, while she and Magdalen now looked 
at each other. It was plain at the outset that the true face and 
figure which she now saw ^called nothing to her mind of the false 
face and figure which she had seen in Vauxhall Walk. The dis- 
guise had evidently been complete enough even to baffle the pene- 
tration of Mrs. Lecount. 


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“ My aunt and I came here yesterday evening/’ said Magdalen. 
“We found the latter part of the journey very fatiguing. I dare 
say you found it so too ?” 

She designedly made her answer longer than was necessary, for 
the purpose of discovering, at the earliest opportunity, the effect 
which the sound of her voice produced on Mrs. Lecount. 

The housekeeper’s thin lips maintained their motherly smile ; the 
housekeeper’s amiable manner lost none of its modest deference, but 
the expression of her eyes suddenly changed from a look of atten- 
tion to a look of inquiry. Magdalen quietly said a few words more, 
and then waited again for results. The change spread gradually 
all over Mrs. Lecount’s face, the motherly smile died away, and the 
amiable manner betrayed a slight touch of restraint. Still no signs 
of positive recognition appeared ; the housekeeper’s expression re- 
mained what it had been from the first — an expression of inquiry, 
and nothing more. 

“ You complained of fatigue, sir, a few minutes since,” she said, 
dropping all further conversation with Magdalen, and addressing 
her master. “ Will you go indoors and rest ?” 

The proprietor of Sea- view Cottage had hitherto confined himself 
to bowing, simpering, and admiring Magdalen through his half- 
closed eyelids. There was no mistaking the sudden flutter and 
agitation in his manner, and the heightened color in his wizen lit- 
tle face. Even the reptile temperament of Noel Yanstone warmed 
under the influence of the sex : he had an undeniably appreciative 
eye for a handsome woman, and Magdalen’s grace and beauty were 
not thrown away on him. 

“Will you go indoors, sir, and rest?” asked the housekeeper, re- 
peating her question. 

“ Not yet, Lecount,” said her master. “ I fancy I feel stronger ; 
I fancy I can go on a little.” He turned simpering to Magdalen, 
and added, in a lower tone, “ I have found a new interest in my 
walk, Miss By grave. Don’t desert us, or you will take the interest 
away with you.” 

He smiled and smirked in the highest approval of the ingenuity 
of his own compliment — from which Captain Wragge dexterously 
diverted the housekeeper’s attention by ranging himself on her side 
of the path and speaking to her at the same moment. They all 
four walked on slowly. Mrs. Lecount said nothing more. She 
kept fast hold of her master’s arm, and looked across him at Mag- 
dalen with the dangerous expression of inquiry more marked than 
ever in her handsome black eyes. That# look was not lost on the 
wary Wragge. He shifted his indicative camp-stool from the left 
hand to the right, and opened his scientific batteries on the spot. 

“ A busy scene, Mrs. Lecount,” said the captain, politely waving 


NO NAME. 


303 


his camp-stool over the sea and the passing ships. “ The greatness 
of England, ma’am — the true greatness of England. Pray observe 
how heavily some of those vessels are laden ! I am often inclined 
to wonder whether the British sailor is at all aware, when he has 
got his cargo on board, of the Hydrostatic importance of the opera- 
tion that he has performed. If I were suddenly transported to the 
deck of one of those ships (which Heaven forbid, for I suffer at 
sea) ; and if I said to a member of the crew, ‘ Jack ! you have done 
wonders; you have grasped the Theory of Floating Vessels’ — how 
the gallant fellow would stare ! And yet on that theory Jack’s life 
depends. If he loads his vessel one-thirtieth part more than he 
ought, what happens ? He sails past Aldborough, I grant you, in 
safety. He enters the Thames, I grant you again, in safety. He 
gets on into the fresh water as far, let us say, as Greenwich ; and — 
down he goes ! Down, ma’am, to the bottom of the river, as a mat- 
ter of scientific certainty !” 

Here he paused, and left Mrs. Lecount no polite alternative but 
to request an explanation. 

“ With infinite pleasure, ma’am,” said the captain, drowning in 
the deepest notes of his voice the feeble treble in which Noel Van- 
stone paid his compliments to Magdalen. “We will start, if you 
please, with a first principle. All bodies whatever that float on the 
surface of the water displace as much fluid as is equal in weight to 
the weight of the bodies. Good. We have got our first principle. 
What do we deduce from it ? Manifestly this : That, in order to 
keep a vessel above water, it is necessary to take care that the vessel 
and its cargo shall be of less weight than the weight of a quantity 
of water — pray follow me here ! — of a quantity of water equal in 
bulk to that part of the vessel which it will be safe to immerse in 
the water. Now, ma’am, salt-water is specifically thirty times heav- 
ier than fresh or river water, and a vessel in the German Ocean will 
not sink so deep as a vessel in the Thames. Consequently, when 
we load our ship with a view to the London market, we have (Hy- 
drostatically speaking) three alternatives. Either we load with 
one-thirtieth part less than we can carry at sea; or we take one- 
thirtieth part out at the mouth of the river; or we do neither the 
one nor the other, and, as I have already had the honor of remark- 
ing — down we go ! Such,” said the captain, shifting the camp- 
stool back again from his right hand to his left, in token that Joyce 
was done with for the time being ; “ such, my dear madam, is the 
Theory of Floating Vessels. Permit me to add, in conclusion, you 
are heartily welcome to it.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “You have unintention- 
ally saddened me ; but the information I have received is not the 
less precious on that account. It is long, long ago, Mr. Bygrave, 


304 


NO NAME. 


since I have heard myself addressed in the language of science. My 
dear husband made me his companion — my dear husband improved 
my mind as you have been trying to improve it. Nobody has taken 
pains with my intellect since. Many thanks, sir. Your kind con- 
sideration for me is not thrown away.” 

She sighed with a plaintive humility, and privately opened her 
ears to the conversation on the other side of her. 

A minute earlier she would have heard her master expressing 
himself in the most flattering terms on the subject’ of Miss Bygrave’s 
appearance in her sea-side costume. But Magdalen had seen Cap- 
tain Wragge’s signal with the camp-stool, and had at once diverted 
Noel Yanstone to the topic of himself and his possessions by a neat- 
ly-timed question about his house at Aldborough. 

“ I don’t wish to alarm you, Miss Bygrave,” were the first words 
of Noel Vanstone’s which caught Mrs. Lecount’s attention, “ but 
there is only one safe house in Aldborough, and that house is Mine. 
The sea may destroy all the other houses — it can’t destroy Mine. 
My father took care of that ; my father was a remarkable man. He 
had My house built on piles. I have reason to believe they are the 
strongest piles in England. Nothing can possibly knock them 
down — I don’t care what the sea does — nothing can possibly knock 
them down.” 

u Then, if the sea invades us,” said Magdalen, “ we must all run 
for refuge to you.” 

Noel Yanstone saw his way to another compliment ; and, at the 
same moment, the wary captain saw his way to another burst of 
science. 

“I could almost wish the invasion might happen,” murmured one 
of the gentlemen, “ to give me the happiness of offering the refuge.” 

“I could almost swear the wind had '■shifted again!” exclaimed 
the other. “ Where is a man I can ask ? Oh, there he is. Boat- 
man ! How’s the wind now ? Nor’-west and by west still — hey ? 
And south-east and by south yesterday evening — ha ? Is there any 
thing more remarkable, Mrs. Lecount, than the variableness of the 
wind in this climate ?” proceeded the captain, shifting the camp- 
stool to the scientific side of him. “ Is there any natural phenome- 
non more bewildering to the scientific inquirer ? You will tell me 
that the electric fluid which abounds in the air is the principal 
cause of this variableness. You will remind me of the experiment 
of that illustrious philosopher who measured the velocity of a great 
storm by a flight of small feathers. My dear madam, I grant all 
your propositions — ” 

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount; “you kindly at- 
tribute to me a knowledge that I don’t possess. Propositions, I re- 
gret to say, are quite beyond me.” 


NO NAME. 


305 


“Don’t misunderstand me, ma’am,” continued the captain, polite' 
ly unconscious of the interruption. u My remarks apply to the 
temperate zone only. Place me on the coasts beyond the tropics — 
place me where the wind blows toward the shore in the day-time, 
and toward the sea by night — and I instantly advance toward con- 
clusive experiments. For example, I know that the heat of the sun 
during the day rarefies the air over the land, and so causes the wind. 
You challenge me to prove it. I escort you down the kitchen stairs 
(with your kind permission) ; I take my largest pie-dish out of the 
cook’s hands ; I fill it with cold water. Good ! that dish of cold 
water represents the ocean. I next provide myself with one of our 
most precious domestic conveniences, a hot-water plate; I fill it 
with hot water, and I put it in the middle of the pie-dish. Good 
again ! the hot-water plate represents the land rarefying the air over 
it. Bear that in mind, and give me a lighted candle. I hold my 
lighted candle over the cold water, and blow it out. The smoke 
immediately moves from the dish to the plate. Before you have 
time to express your satisfaction, I light the candle once more, and 
reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the pie-dish with hot water, 
and the plate with cold ; I blow the candle out again, and the 
smoke moves this time from the plate to the dish. The smell is 
disagreeable — but the experiment is conclusive.” 

He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount 
with his ingratiating smile. “You don’t find me long-winded, 
ma’am — do you?” he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the 
housekeeper was privately opening her ears once more to the con- 
versation on the other side of her. 

“I am amazed, sir, by the range of your information,” replied 
Mrs. Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexity — but thus 
far with no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an En- 
glishman, and possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had 
at least paid her the implied compliment of addressing that knowl- 
edge to herself; and she felt it the more sensibly, from having 
hitherto found her scientific sympathies with her deceased husband 
treated with no great respect by the people with whom she came in 
contact. “ Have you extended your inquiries, sir,” she proceeded, 
after a momentary hesitation, “to my late husband’s branch of 
science? I merely ask, Mr. Bygrave, because (though I am only a 
woman) I think I might exchange ideas with you on the subject of 
the reptile creation.” 

Captain Wragge was far too sharp to risk his ready-made science 
on the enemy’s ground. The old militia-man shook his wary head. 

“ Too vast a subject, ma’am,” he said, “ for a smatterer like me. 
The life and labors of such a philosopher as your husband, Mrs. Le- 
count, warn men of my intellectual calibre not to measure themselves 


306 


NO NAME. 


with a giant. May T inquire,” proceeded the captain, softly smooth 
ing the way for future intercourse with Sea-view Cottage, “ whettr 
er you possess any scientific memorials of the late Professor ?” 

“ I possess his Tank, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, modestly casting her 
eyes on the ground, “ and one of his Subjects — a little foreign Toad.” 

“ His Tank !” exclaimed the captain, in tones of mournful inter- 
est ; “ and his Toad ! Pardon my blunt way of speaking my mind, 
ma’am. You possess an object of public interest; and, as one of the 
public, I acknowledge my curiosity to see it.” 

Mrs. Lecount’s smooth cheeks colored with pleasure. The one as- 
sailable place in that cold and secret nature was the place occupied 
by the memory of the Professor. Her pride in his scientific achieve- 
ments, and her mortification at finding them but little known out 
of his own country, were genuine feelings. Never had Captain 
Wragge burned his adulterated incense on the flimsy altar of human 
vanity to better purpose than he was burning it now. 

“You are very good, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ In honoring my 
husband’s memory, you honor me. But though you kindly treat me 
on a footing of equality, I must not forget that I fill a domestic situ- 
ation. I shall feel it a privilege to show you my relics, if you will 
allow me to ask my master’s permission first.” 

She turned to Noel Yanstone ; her perfectly sincere intention of 
making the proposed request, mingling — in that strange complexity 
of motives which is found so much oftener in a woman’s mind than 
in a man’s — with her jealous distrust of the impression which Mag- 
dalen had produced on her master. 

“ May I make a request, sir ?” asked Mrs. Lecount, after waiting a 
moment to catch any fragments of tenderly-personal talk that might 
reach her, and after being again neatly baffled by Magdalen — thanks 
to the camp-stool. “ Mr. Bygrave is one of the few persons in En- 
gland who appreciate my husband’s scientific labors. He honors 
me by wishing to see my little world of reptiles. May I show it to 
him ?” 

“ By all means, Lecount,” said Noel Yanstone, graciously. “ You 
are an excellent creature, and I like to oblige you. Lecount’s Tank, 
Mr. Bygrave, is the only Tank in England— Lecount’s Toad is the 
oldest Toad in the world. Will you come and drink tea at seven 
o’clock to-night ? And will you prevail on Miss Bygrave to accom- 
pany you ? I want her to see my house. I don’t think she has any 
idea what a strong house it is. Come and survey my premises, Miss 
Bygrave. You shall have a stick, and rap on the walls; you shall 
go up stairs and stamp on the floors, and then you shall hear what 
it all cost.” His eyes wrinkled up cunningly at the corners, and he 
slipped another tender speech into Magdalen’s ear, under cover of 
the all-predominating voice in which Captain Wragge thanked him 


NO NAME* 307 

foi the invitation. “ Come punctually at seven,” he whispered, “and 
pray wear that charming hat !” 

Mrs. Lecount’s lips closed ominously. She set down the captain’s 
niece as a very serious drawback to the intellectual luxury of the 
captain’s society. 

“You are fatiguing yourself, sir,” she said to her master. “This 
is one of your bad days. Let me recommend you to be careful ; let 
me beg you to walk back.” 

Having carried his point by inviting the new acquaintances to 
tea, Noel Yanstone proved to be unexpectedly docile. He acknowl- 
edged that he was a little fatigued, and turned back at once in obe- 
dience to the housekeeper’s advice. 

“ Take my arm, sir — take my arm on the other side,” said Captain 
Wragge, as they turned to retrace their steps. His party-colored 
eyes looked significantly at Magdalen while he spoke, and warned 
her not to stretch Mrs. Lecount’s endurance too far at starting. She 
instantly understood him ; and, in spite of Noel Yanstone’s reiterated 
assertions that he stood in no need of the captain’s arm, placed her- 
self at once by the housekeeper’s side. Mrs. Lecount recovered her 
good -humor, and opened another conversation with Magdalen by 
making the one inquiry of all others which, under existing circum- 
stances, was the hardest to answer. 

“ I presume Mrs. Bygrave is too tired, after her journey, to come 
out to-day ?” said Mrs. Lecount. “ Shall we have the pleasure of 
seeing her to-morrow ?” 

“Probably not,” replied Magdalen. “My aunt is in delicate 
health.” 

“ A complicated case, my dear madam,” added the captain ; con- 
scious that Mrs. Wragge’s personal appearance (if she happened to 
be seen by accident) would offer the flattest of all possible contra- 
dictions to what Magdalen had just said of her. “ There is some re- 
mote nervous mischief which doesn’t express itself externally. You 
would think my wife the picture of health if you looked at her, and 
yet, so delusive are appearances, I am obliged to forbid her all ex- 
citement. She sees no society — our medical attendant, I regret to 
say, absolutely prohibits it.” 

“ Yery sad,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ The poor lady must often feel 
lonely, sir, when you and your niece are away from her ?” 

“ No,” replied the captain. “ Mrs. Bygrave is a naturally domes- 
tic woman. When she is able to employ herself, she finds unlimited 
resources in her needle and thread.” Having reached this stage of 
the explanation, and having purposely skirted, as it were, round th? 
confines of truth, in the event of the housekeeper’s curiosity leading 
her co make any private inquiries on the subject of Mrs. Wragge, 
the captain wisely checked his fluent tongue from carrying him into 


308 


NO NAME. 


any further details. “ I have great hope from the air of this place,” 
he remarked, in conclusion. “ The Iodine, as I have already ob- 
served, does wonders.” 

Mrs. Lecount acknowledged the virtues of Iodine, in the briefest 
possible form of words, and withdrew into the innermost sanctuary 
of her own thoughts. “ Some mystery here,” said the housekeeper 
to herself. “A lady who looks the picture of health; a lady who 
suffers from a complicated nervous malady ; and a lady whose hand 
is steady enough to use her needle and thread — is a living mass of 
contradictions I don’t quite understand. Do you make a long stay 
at Aldborough, sir ?” she added aloud, her eyes resting for a moment, 
in steady scrutiny, on the captain’s face. 

“ It all depends, my dear madam, on Mrs. Bygrave. I trust we 
shall stay through the autumn. You are settled at Sea- view Cot- 
tage, I presume, for the season ?” 

“You must ask my master, sir. It is for him to decide, not for me.” 

The answer was an unfortunate one. Noel Yanstone had been 
secretly annoyed by the change in the walking arrangements, which 
had separated him from Magdalen. He attributed that change to 
the meddling influence of Mrs. Lecount, and he now took the ear- 
liest opportunity of resenting it on the spot. 

“I have nothing to do with our stay at Aldborough,” he broke 
out, peevishly. u You know as well as I do, Lecount, it all depends 
on you. Mrs. Lecount has a brother in Switzerland,” he went on, 
addressing himself to the captain — “ a brother who is seriously ill. 
If he gets worse, she will have to go there and see him. I can’t ac- 
company her, and I can’t be left in the house by myself. I shall 
have to break up my establishment at Aldborough, and stay with 
some friends. It all depends on you, Lecount — or on your brother, 
which comes to the same thing. If it depended on me,” continued 
Mr. Noel Yanstone, looking pointedly at Magdalen across the house- 
keeper, u I should stay at Aldborough all through the autumn with 
the greatest pleasure. With the greatest pleasure,” he reiterated, 
repeating the words with a tender look for Magdalen, and a spite- 
ful accent for Mrs. Lecount. 

Thus far Captain Wragge had remained silent; carefully noting 
in his mind the promising possibilities of a separation between Mrs. 
Lecount and her master, which Noel Yanstone’s little fretful out- 
break had just disclosed to him. An ominous trembling in the 
housekeeper’s thin lips, as her master openly exposed her family 
affairs before strangers, and openly set her jealously at defiance, now 
warned him to interfere. If the misunderstanding were permitted 
to proceed to extremities, there was a chance that the invitation for 
that evening to Sea-view Cottage might be put off. Now, as ever, 
equal to the occasion, Captain Wragge called his useful information 


NO NAME. 


309 


once more to the rescue. Under the learned auspices of Joyce, he 
plunged, for the third time, into the ocean of science, and brought 
up another pearl. He was still haranguing (on Pneumatics this 
time), still improving Mrs. Lecount’s mind with his politest per- 
severance and his smoothest flow of language — when the walking- 
party stopped at Noel Yanstone’s door. 

“ Bless my soul, here we are at your house, sir !” said the captain, 
interrupting himself in the middle of one of his graphic sentences. 
“I won’t keep you standing a moment. Not a word of apology, 
Mrs. Lecount, I beg and pray ; I will put that curious point in 
Pneumatics more clearly before you on a future occasion. In the 
mean time I need only repeat that you can perform the experiment 
I have just mentioned to your own entire satisfaction with a blad- 
der, an exhausted receiver, and a square box. At seven o’clock 
this evening, sir — at seven o’clock, Mrs. Lecount. We have had a 
remarkably pleasant walk, and a most instructive interchange of 
ideas. Now, my dear girl, your aunt is waiting for us.” 

While Mrs. Lecount stepped aside to open the garden gate, Noel 
Yanstone seized his opportunity and shot a last tender glance at 
Magdalen, under shelter of the umbrella, which he had taken into 
his own hands for that express purpose. “ Don’t forget,” he said, 
with the sweetest smile ; “ don’t forget, when you come this evem 
ing, to wear that charming hat!” Before he could add any last 
words, Mrs. Lecount glided back to her place, and the sheltering 
umbrella changed hands again immediately. 

“ An excellent morning’s work !” said Captain Wragge, as he and 
Magdalen walked on together to North Shingles. “ You and I and 
Joyce have all three done wonders. We have secured a friendly in- 
vitation at the first day’s fishing for it.” 

He paused for an answer ; and, receiving none, observed Mag- 
dalen more attentively than he had observed her yet. Her face had 
turned deadly pale again ; her eyes looked out mechanically straight 
before her in heedless, reckless despair. 

“ What is the matter ?” he asked, with the greatest surprise. 
u Are you ill ?” 

She made no reply ; she hardly seemed to hear him. 

“Are you getting alarmed about Mrs. Lecount ?” he inquired next. 
“ There is not the least reason for alarm. She may fancy she has 
heard something like your voice before, but your face evidently 
bewilders her. Keep your temper, and you keep her in the dark. 
Keep her in the dark, and you will put that two hundred pounds 
into my hands before the autumn is over.” 

He waited again for an answer, and again she remained silent. 
The captain tried for the third time in another direction. 

“ Did you get any letters this morning ?” he went on. M Is there 


310 


NO NAME. 


bad news again from home? Any fresh difficulties with youi 
sister ?” 

“ Say nothing about my sister !” she broke out passionately. 
“ Neither you nor I are fit to speak of her.” 

She said those words at the garden gate, and hurried into the 
house by herself. He followed her, and heard the door of her own 
room violently shut to, violently locked and double-locked. Sola- 
cing his indignation by an oath, Captain Wragge sullenly went into 
one of the parlors on the ground-floor to look after his wife. The 
room communicated with a smaller and darker room at the back of 
the house by means of a quaint little door with a window in the up 
per half of it. Softly approaching this door, the captain lifted the 
white muslin curtain which hung over the window, and looked into 
the inner room. 

There was Mrs. Wragge, with her cap on one side, and her shoes 
down at heel ; with a row of pins between her teeth ; with the Ori- 
ental Cashmere Robe slowly slipping off the table ; with her scissors 
suspended uncertain in one hand, and her written directions for 
dress-making held doubtfully in the other — so absorbed over the 
invincible difficulties of her employment as to be perfectly uncon- 
scious that she was at that moment the object of her husband’s 
superintending eye. Under other circumstances, she would have 
been soon brought to a sense of her situation by the sound of his 
voice. But Captain Wragge was too anxious about Magdalen to 
waste any time on his wife, after satisfying himself that she was safe 
in her seclusion, and that she might be trusted to remain there. 

He left the parlor, and, after a little hesitation in the passage, 
stole up stairs and listened anxiously outside Magdalen’s door. A 
dull sound of sobbing — a sound stifled in her handkerchief, or sti- 
fled in the bed-clothes — was all that caught his ear. He returned 
at once to the ground-floor, with some faint suspicion of the truth 
dawning on his mind at last. 

“ The devil take that sweetheart of hers !” thought the captain. 
“ Mr. Noel Vanstone has raised the ghost of him at starting.” 


CHAPTER V. 

When Magdalen appeared in the parlor shortly before seven 
o’clock, not a trace of discomposure was visible in her manner. 
She looked and spoke as quietly and unconcernedly as usual. 

The lowering distrust on Captain Wragge’s face cleared away at 
the sight of her. There had been moments during the afternoon 
when he had seriously doubted whether the pleasure of satisfying 


NO NAME. 


311 


the grudge he owed to Noel Yanstone, and the prospect of earning 
the sum of two hundred pounds, would not be dearly purchased by 
running the risk of discovery to which Magdalen’s uncertain temper 
might expose him at any hour of the day. The plain proof now 
before him of her powers of self-control relieved his mind of a se- 
rious anxiety. It mattered little to the captain what she suffered 
in the privacy of her own chamber, as long as she came out of it 
with a face that would bear inspection, and a voice that betrayed 
nothing. 

On the way to Sea- view Cottage, Captain Wragge expressed his 
intention of asking the housekeeper a few sympathizing questions 
on the subject of her invalid brother in Switzerland. He was of 
opinion that the critical condition of this gentleman’s health might 
exercise an important influence on the future progress of the con- 
spiracy. Any chance of a separation, he remarked, between the 
housekeeper and her master was, under existing circumstances, a 
chance which merited the closest investigation. “ If we can only 
get Mrs. Lecount out of the way at the right time,” whispered the 
captain, as he opened his host’s garden gate, “ our man is caught !” 

In a minute more Magdalen was again under Noel Yanstone’s 
roof; this time in the character of his own invited guest. 

The proceedings of the evening were for the most part a repeti- 
tion of the proceedings during the morning walk. Noel Yanstone 
vibrated between his admiration of Magdalen’s beauty and his glo- 
rification of his own possessions. Captain Wragge’s inexhaustible 
outbursts of information — relieved by delicately-indirect inquiries 
relating to Mrs. Lecount’s brother — perpetually diverted the house- 
keeper’s jealous vigilance from dwelling on the looks and language 
of her master. So the evening passed until ten o’clock. By that 
time the captain’s ready-made science was exhausted, and the house- 
keeper’s temper was forcing its way to the surface. Once more Cap- 
tain Wragge warned Magdalen by a look, and, in spite of Noel Yan- 
stone’s hospitable protest, wisely rose to say good-night. 

“I have got my information,” remarked the captain on the way 
back. “ Mrs. Lecount’s brother lives at Zurich. He is a bachelor ; 
he possesses a little money, and his sister is his nearest relation. If 
he will only be so obliging as to break up altogether, he will save 
us a world of trouble with Mrs. Lecount.” 

It was a fine moonlight night. He looked round at Magdalen, as 
he said those words, to see if her intractable depression of spirits 
had seized on her again. 

No ! her variable humor had changed once more. She looked 
about her with a flaunting, feverish gayety ; she scoffed at the bare 
idea ot any serious difficulty with Mrs. Lecount ; she mimicked Noel 
Vanstone’s high-pitched voice, and repeated Noel Yanstone’s high- 


312 


NO NAME. 


flown compliments, with a bitter enjoyment of turning him into rkf* 
icule. Instead of running into the house as before, she sauntered 
carelessly by her companion’s side, humming little snatches of song, 
and kicking the loose pebbles right and left on the garden walk. 
Captain Wragge hailed the change in her as the best of good omens. 
He thought he saw plain signs that the family spirit was at last 
coming back again. 

“ Well,” he said, as he lit her bedroom candle for her, “ when we 
all meet on the Parade to-morrow, we shall see, as our nautical 
friends say, how the land lies. One thing I can tell you, my dear 
girl — I have used my eyes to very little purpose if there is not a 
storm brewing to-night in Mr. Noel Yanstone’s domestic atmos- 
phere.” 

The captain’s habitual penetration had not misled him. As soon 
as the door of Sea-view Cottage was closed on the parting guests, 
Mrs. Lecount made an effort to assert the authority which Magda- 
len’s influence was threatening already. 

She employed every artifice of which she was mistress to ascer- 
tain Magdalen’s true position in Noel Yanstone’s estimation. She 
tried again and again to lure him into an unconscious confession of 
the pleasure which he felt already in the society of the beautiful 
Miss Bygrave ; she twined herself in and out of every weakness in 
his character, as the frogs and efts twined themselves in and out 
of the rock-work of her Aquarium. But she made one serious mis- 
take w T hich very clever people in their intercourse with their intel- 
lectual inferiors are almost universally apt to commit — she trusted 
implicitly to the folly of a fool. She forgot that one of the lowest 
of human qualities — cunning — is exactly the capacity which is often 
most largely developed in the lowest of intellectual natures. If she 
had been honestly angry with her master, she would probably have 
frightened him. If she had opened her mind plainly to his view, 
she would have astonished him by presenting a chain of ideas to 
his limited perceptions which they were not strong enough to grasp ; 
his curiosity would have led him to ask for an explanation ; and 
by practicing on that curiosity, she might have had him at her mer- 
cy. As it was, she set her cunning against his, and the fool proved 
a match for her. Noel Yanstone, to whom all large-minded mo- 
tives under heaven were inscrutable mysteries, saw the small-mind- 
ed motive at the bottom of his housekeeper’s conduct with as in- 
stantaneous a penetration as if he had been a man of the highest 
ability. Mrs. Lecount left him for the night, foiled, and knowing 
she was foiled — left him, with the tigerish side of her uppermost, 
and a low-lived longing in her elegant finger-nails to set them in 
her master’s face. 

She was not a woman to be beaten by one defeat or by a hun* 


NO NAME. 


313 


dred. She was positively determined to think, and think again, 
until she had found a means of checking the growing intimacy 
with the Bygraves at once and forever. In the solitude of her own 
room she recovered her composure, and set herself for the first time 
to review the conclusions which she had gathered from the events 
of the day. 

There was something vaguely familiar to her in the voice of this 
Miss Bygrave, and, at the same time, in unaccountable contradiction, 
something strange to her as well. The face and figure of the young 
lady were entirely new to her. It was a striking face, and a strik- 
ing figure ; and if she had seen either at any former period, she 
would certainly have remembered it. Miss Bygrave was unques- 
tionably a stranger ; and yet — 

She had got no further than this during the day ; she could get 
no further now: the chain of thought broke. Her mind took up 
the fragments, and formed another chain which attached itself to 
the lady who was kept in seclusion — to the aunt, who looked well, 
and yet was nervous ; who was nervous, and yet able to ply her 
needle and thread. An incomprehensible resemblance to some un- 
remembered voice in the niece ; an unintelligible malady which kept 
the aunt secluded from public view ; an extraordinary range of sci- 
entific cultivation in the uncle, associated with a coarseness and 
audacity of manner which by no means suggested the idea of a 
man engaged in studious pursuits — were the members of this small 
family of three, what they seemed on the surface of them ? 

With that question on her mind, she went to bed. 

As soon as the candle was out, the darkness seemed to communi- 
cate some inexplicable perversity to her thoughts. They wandered 
back from present things to past, in spite of her. They brought her 
old master back to life again ; they revived forgotten sayings and 
doings in the English circle at Zurich ; they veered away to the old 
man’s death-bed at Brighton; they moved from Brighton to Lon- 
don; they entered the bare, comfortless room at Vauxhall Walk; 
they set the Aquarium back in its place on the kitchen table, and 
put the false Miss Garth in the chair by the side of it, shading her 
inflamed eyes from the light ; they placed the anonymous letter, the 
letter which glanced darkly at a conspiracy, in her hand again, and 
brought her with it into her master’s presence ; they recalled the 
discussion about filling in the blank space in the advertisement, 
and the quarrel that followed when she told Noel Yanstone that 
the sum he had offered was preposterously small ; they revived an 
old doubt which had not troubled her for weeks past — a doubt 
whether the threatened conspiracy had evaporated in mere words, 
or whether she and her master were likely to hear of it again. At 
this point her thoughts broke off once more, and there was a mo- 


314 


NO NAME. 


mentary blank. The next instant she started up in bed ; her heart 
beating violently, her head whirling as if she had lost her senses. 
With electric suddenness her mind pieced together its scattered 
multitude of thoughts, and put them before her plainly under one 
intelligible form. In the all - mastering agitation of the moment, 
she clapped her hands together, and cried out suddenly in the 
darkness, 

“ Miss Yanstone again ! ! !” 

She got out of bed and kindled the light once more. Steady as 
her nerves were, the shock of her own suspicion had shaken them. 
Her firm hand trembled as she opened her dressing-case and took 
from it a little bottle of sal-volatile. In spite of her smooth cheeks 
and her well-preserved hair, she looked every year of her age as she 
mixed the spirit with water, greedily drank it, and, wrapping her 
dressing-gown round her, sat down on the bedside to get possession 
again of her calmer self. 

She was quite incapable of tracing the mental process which had 
led her to discovery. She could not get sufficiently far from herself 
to see that her half-formed conclusions on the subject of the By- 
graves had ended in making that family objects of suspicion to her; 
that the association of ideas had thereupon carried her mind back 
to that other object of suspicion which was represented by the con- 
spiracy against her master; and that the two ideas of those two 
separate subjects of distrust, coming suddenly in contact, had struck 
the light. She was not able to reason back in this way from the 
effect to the cause. She could only feel that the suspicion had be- 
come more than a suspicion already: conviction itself could not 
have been more firmly rooted in her mind. 

Looking back at Magdalen by the new light now thrown on her, 
Mrs. Lecount would fain have persuaded herself that she recognized 
some traces left of the false Miss Garth’s face and figure in the grace- 
ful and beautiful girl who had sat at her master’s table hardly an 
hour since — that she found resemblances now, which she had never 
thought of before, between the angry voice she had heard in Vaux- 
hall Walk and the smooth, well bred tones which still hung on her 
ears after the evening’s experience down stairs. She would fain have 
persuaded herself that she had reached these results with no undue 
straining of the truth as she really knew it, but the effort was in vain. 

Mrs. Lecount was not a woman to waste time and thought in try- 
ing to impose on herself. She accepted the inevitable conclusion 
that the guess-work of a moment had led her to discovery. And, 
more than that, she recognized the plain truth — unwelcome as it was 
— that the conviction now fixed in her own mind was thus far un- 
supported by a single fragment of producible evidence to justify it 
to the minds of others. 


NO NAME. 


315 


Under these circumstances, what was the safe course to take with 
her master ? 

If she candidly told him, when they met the next morning, what 
had passed through her mind that night, her knowledge of Noel 
Vanstone warned her that one of two results would certainly hap- 
pen. Either he would be angry and disputatious ; would ask for 
proofs ; and, finding none forthcoming, would accuse her of alarm- 
ing him without a cause, to serve her own jealous end of keeping 
Magdalen out of the house ; or he would be seriously startled, would 
clamor for the protection of the law, and would warn the Bygraves 
to stand on their defense at the outset. If Magdalen only had been 
concerned in the plot, this latter consequence would have assumed 
no great importance in the housekeeper’s mind. But seeing the de- 
ception as she now saw it, she was far too clever a woman to fail in 
estimating the captain’s inexhaustible fertility of resource at its true 
value. u If I can’t meet this impudent villain with plain proofs to 
help me,” thought Mrs. Lecount, “ I may open my master’s eyes to- 
morrow morning, and Mr. Bygrave will shut them up again before 
night. The rascal is playing with all his own cards under the table, 
and he will win the game to a certainty if he sees my hand at starting.” 

This policy of waiting was so manifestly the wise policy — the wily 
Mr. Bygrave was so sure to have provided himself, in case of emer- 
gency, with evidence to prove the identity which he and his niece 
had assumed for their purpose, that Mrs. Lecount at once decided to 
keep her own counsel the next morning, and to pause before attack- 
ing the conspiracy until she could produce unanswerable facts to 
help her. Her master’s acquaintance with the Bygraves was only 
an acquaintance of one day’s standing. There was no fear of its de- 
veloping into a dangerous intimacy if she merely allowed it to con- 
tinue for a few days more, and if she permanently checked it, at the 
latest, in a week’s time. 

In that period, what measures could she take to remove the ob- 
stacles which now stood in her way, and to provide herself with the 
weapons which she now wanted ? 

Reflection showed her three different chances in her favor — three 
different ways of arriving at the necessary discovery. 

The first chance was to cultivate friendly terms with Magdalen, 
and then, taking her unawares, to entrap her into betraying herself 
in Noel Vanstone’s presence. The second chance was to write to 
the elder Miss Vanstone, and to ask (with some alarming reason for 
putting the question) for information on the subject of her younger 
sister’s whereabouts, and of any peculiarities in her personal appear- 
ance which might enable a stranger to identify her. The third 
chance was to penetrate the mystery of Mrs. Bygrave’s seclusion, and 
to ascertain at a personal interview whether the invalid lady’s real 


316 


NO NAME. 


complaint might not possibly be a defective capacity for keeping 
her husband’s secrets. Resolving to try all three chances, in the or- 
der in which they are here enumerated, and to set her snares for 
Magdalen on the day that was now already at hand, Mrs. Lecount at 
last took off her dressing-gown and allowed her weaker nature to 
plead with her for a little sleep. 

The dawn was breaking over the cold gray sea as she lay down 
in her bed again. The last idea in her mind before she fell asleep 
was characteristic of the woman — it was an idea that threatened the 
captain. “ He has trifled with the sacred memory of my husband,” 
thought the Professor’s widow. “ On my life and honor, I will 
make him pay for it.” 

Early the next morning Magdalen began the day, according to 
her agreement with the captain, by taking Mrs. Wragge out for a 
little exercise at an hour when there was no fear of her attracting 
the public attention. She pleaded hard to be left at home ; having 
the Oriental Cashmere Robe still on her mind, and feeling it neces- 
sary to read her directions for dress-making, for the hundredth time 
at least, before (to use her own expression) she could “ screw up her 
courage to put the scissors into the stuff.” But her companion would 
take no denial, and she was forced to go out. The one guileless pur- 
pose of the life which Magdalen now led was the resolution that 
poor Mrs. Wragge should not be made a prisoner on her account ; 
and to that resolution she mechanically clung, as the last token left 
her by which she knew her better-self. 

They returned later than usual to breakfast. While Mrs. Wragge 
was up stairs, straightening herself from head to foot to meet the 
morning inspection of her husband’s orderly eye ; and while Magda- 
len and the captain were waiting for her in the parlor, the servant 
came in with a note from Sea-view Cottage. The messenger was wait- 
ing for an answer, and the note was addressed to Captain Wragge. 

The captain opened the note and read these lines: 

“Dear Sir, — Mr. Noel Yanstone desires me to write and tell you 
that he proposes enjoying this fine day by taking a long drive to a 
place on the coast here called Dunwich. He is anxious to know if 
you will share the expense of a carriage, and give him the pleasure 
of your company and Miss Bygrave’s company on this excursion. 
I am kindly permitted to be one of the party ; and if I may say so 
without impropriety, I w r ould venture to add that I shall feel as 
much pleasure as my master if you and your young lady will con- 
sent to join us. We propose leaving Aldborough punctually at 
eleven o’clock. Believe me, dear sir, your humble servant, 

“Virginie Lecount.” 


NO NAME. 


317 


“ Who is the letter from ?” asked Magdalen, noticing a change in 
Captain Wragge’s face as he read it. “ What do they want with us 
at Sea-view Cottage ?” 

“ Pardon me,” said the captain, gravely, u this requires considera- 
tion. Let me have a minute or two to think.” 

He took a few turns up and down the room, then suddenly step^ 
ped aside to a table in a corner on which his writing materials were 
placed. “ I was not born yesterday, ma’am !” said the captain, 
speaking jocosely to himself. He winked his brown eye, took up 
his pen, and wrote the answer. 

“ Can you speak now ?” inquired Magdalen, when the servant had 
left the room. “What does that letter say, and how have you 
answered it ?” 

The captain placed the letter in her hand. “ I have accepted the 
invitation,” he replied, quietly. 

Magdalen read the letter. “ Hidden enmity yesterday,” she said, 
“ and open friendship to-day. What does it mean ?” 

“It means,” said Captain Wragge, “that Mrs. Lecount is even 
sharper than I thought her. She has found you out.” 

“ Impossible,” cried Magdalen. “ Quite impossible in the time.” 

“ I can’t say how she has found you out,” proceeded the captain, 
with perfect composure. “ She may know more of your voice than 
we supposed she knew. Or she may have thought us, on reflection, 
rather a suspicious family; and any thing suspicious in which a 
woman was concerned may have taken ner mind back to that 
morning call of yours in V auxhall Walk. Whichever way it may 
be, the meaning of this sudden change is clear enough. She has 
found you out ; and she wants to put her discovery to the proof 
by slipping in an awkward question or two, under cover of a little 
friendly talk. My experience of humanity has been a varied one, 
and Mrs. Lecount is not the first sharp practitioner in petticoats 
whom I have had to deal with. All the world’s a stage, my dear 
girl, and one of the scenes on our little stage is shut in from this 
moment.” 

With those words, he took his copy of Joyce’s Scientific Dialogues 
out of his pocket. “ You’re done with already, my friend !” said 
the captain, giving his useful information a farewell smack with 
his hand, and locking it up in the cupboard. “ Such is human 
popularity !” continued the indomitable vagabond, putting the key 
cheerfully in his pocket. “Yesterday Joyce was my all-in-all. To- 
day I don’t care that for him !” He snapped his fingers and sat 
down to breakfast. 

“ I don’t understand you,” said Magdalen, looking at him angrily. 
“Are you leaving me to my own resources for the future ?” 

“My dear girl!” cried Captain Wragge, “can’t you accustom 


318 


NO NAME. 


yourself to my dash of humor yet ? I have done with my ready* 
uiade science simply, because I am quite sure that Mrs. Lecount has 
done believing in me. Haven’t I accepted the invitation to Dun- 
wich ? Make your mind easy. The help I have given you already 
counts for nothing compared with the help I am going to give you 
now. My honor is concerned in bowling out Mrs. Lecount. This 
last move of hers has made it a personal matter between us. The 
woman actually thinks she can take me in ! ! /” cried the captain, 
striking his knife-handle on the table in a transport of virtuous in- 
dignation. “ By heavens, I never was so insulted before in my life ! 
Draw your chair in to the table, my dear, and give me half a min- 
ute’s attention to what I have to say next.” 

Magdalen obeyed him. Captain Wragge cautiously lowered his 
voice before he went on. 

“ I have told you all along,” he said, “ the one thing needful is 
never to let Mrs. Lecount catch you with your wits wool-gathering. 
I say the same after what has happened this morning. Let her sus- 
pect you ! I defy her to find a fragment of foundation for her sus- 
picions, unless we help her. We shall see to-day if she has been 
foolish enough to betray herself to her master before she has any 
facts to support her. I doubt it. If she has told him, we will rain 
down proofs of our identity with the Bygraves on his feeble little 
head, till it absolutely aches with conviction. You have two things 
to do on this excursion. First, to distrust every word Mrs. Lecount 
says to you. Secondly, to exert all your fascinations, and make 
sure of Mr. Noel Yanstone, dating from to-day. I will give you the 
opportunity when we leave the carriage and take our walk at Dun- 
wich. Wear your hat, wear your smile ; do your figure justice, lace 
tight ; put on your neatest boots and brightest gloves ; tie the mis- 
erable little wretch to your apron-string — tie him fast ; and leave 
the whole management of the matter after that to me. Steady ! 
here is Mrs. Wragge : we must be doubly careful in looking after 
her now. Show me your cap, Mrs. W ragge ! show me your shoes ! 
What do I see on your apron ? A spot ? I won’t have spots ! Take 
it off after breakfast, and put on another. Pull your chair to the 
middle of the table — more to the left — more still. Make the break- 
fast.” 

At a quarter before eleven Mrs. Wragge (with her own entire con- 
currence) was dismissed to the back room, to bewilder herself over 
the science of dress-making for the rest of the day. Punctually as 
the clock struck the hour, Mrs. Lecount and her master drove up to 
the gate of North Shingles, and found Magdalen and Captain Wragge 
waiting for them in the garden. 

On the way to Dunwich nothing occurred to disturb the enjoy- 
ment of the drive. Noel Yanstone was in excellent health and high 


NO NAME. 


319 


good-humor. Lecount had apologized for the little misunderstand- 
ing of the previous night ; Lecount had petitioned for the excursion 
as a treat to herself. He thought of these concessions, and looked 
at Magdalen, and smirked and simpered without intermission. Mrs. 
Lecount acted her part to perfection. She was motherly with Mag- 
dalen, and tenderly attentive to Noel Vanstone. She was deeply 
interested in Captain Wragge’s conversation, and meekly disap- 
pointed to find it turn on general subjects, to the exclusion of sci- 
ence. Not a word or look escaped her which hinted in the re- 
motest degree at her real purpose. She was dressed with her cus- 
tomary elegance and propriety; and she was the only one of the 
party on that sultry summer’s day who was perfectly cool in the 
hottest part of the journey. 

As they left the carriage on their arrival at Dunwich, the captain 
seized a moment when Mrs. Lecount’s eye was off him and fortified 
Magdalen by a last warning word. 

“ ’Ware the cat !” he whispered. “ She will show her claws on 
the way back.” 

They left the village and walked to the ruins of a convent near 
at hand — the last relic of the once populous city of Dunwich which 
has survived the destruction of the place, centuries since, by the all- 
devouring sea. After looking at the ruins, they sought the shade 
of a little wood between the village and the low sand-hills which 
overlook the German Ocean. Here Captain Wragge manoeuvred so 
as to let Magdalen and Noel Vanstone advance some distance in 
front of Mrs. Lecount and himself, took the wrong path, and imme- 
diately lost his way with the most consummate dexterity. After a 
few minutes’ wandering (in the wrong direction), he reached an 
open space near the sea ; and politely opening his camp-stool for 
the housekeeper’s accommodation, proposed waiting where they 
were until the missing members of the party came that way and 
discovered them. 

Mrs. Lecount accepted the proposal. She was perfectly well 
aware that her escort had lost himself on purpose, but that discov- 
ery exercised no disturbing influence on the smooth amiability of 
her manner. Her day of reckoning with the captain had not come 
yet — she merely added the new item to her list, and availed herself 
of the camp-stool. Captain Wragge stretched himself in a romantic 
attitude at her feet, and the two determined enemies (grouped like 
two lovers in a picture) fell into as easy and pleasant a conversation 
as if they had been friends of twenty years’ standing. 

“ I know you, ma’am !” thought the captain, while Mrs. Lecount 
was talking to him. “You would like to catch me tripping in my 
ready-made science, and you wouldn’t object to drown me in the 
Professor’s Tank !” 


320 


NO NAME. 


“You villain with the brown eye and the green!” thought Mrs 
Lecount, as the captain caught the ball of conversation in his turn ; 
u thick as your skin is, I’ll sting you through it yet !” 

In this frame of mind toward each other, they talked fluently on 
general subjects, on public affairs, on local scenery, on society in 
England and society in Switzerland, on health, climate, books, mar- 
riage, and money — talked, without a moment’s pause, without a sin- 
gle misunderstanding on either side for nearly an hour, before Mag- 
dalen and Noel Yanstone strayed that way, and made the party of 
four complete again. 

When they reached the inn at which the carriage was waiting for 
them, Captain Wragge left Mrs. Lecount in undisturbed possession 
of her master, and signed to Magdalen to drop back for a moment 
and speak to him. 

“Well?” asked the captain, in a whisper, “is he fast to your 
apron-string ?” 

She shuddered from head to foot as she answered. 

“ He has kissed my hand,” she said. “ Does that tell you enough ? 
Don’t let him sit next me on the way home ! I have borne all I can 
bear — spare me for the rest of the day.” 

“ I’ll put you on the front seat of the carriage,” replied the cap- 
tain, “ side by side with me.” 

On the journey back Mrs. Lecount verified Captain Wragge’s pre- 
diction. She showed her claws. 

The time could not have been better chosen ; the circumstances 
could hardly have favored her more. Magdalen’s spirits were de- 
pressed : she was weary in body and mind ; and she sat exactly op- 
posite the housekeeper, who had been compelled, by the new ar- 
rangement, to occupy the seat of honor next her master. With 
every facility for observing the slightest changes that passed over 
Magdalen’s face, Mrs. Lecount tried her first experiment by leading 
the conversation to the subject of London, and to the relative ad- 
vantages offered to residents by the various quarters of the metrop- 
olis on both sides of the river. The ever-ready Wragge penetrated 
her intention sooner than she had anticipated, and interposed im- 
mediately. “ You’re coming to Yauxhall Walk, ma’am,” thought the 
captain ; “ I’ll get there before you.” 

He entered at once into a purely fictitious description of the vari- 
ous quarters of London in which he had himself resided ; and, adroit- 
ly mentioning Yauxhall Walk as one of them, saved Magdalen from 
the sudden question relating to that very locality with which Mrs. 
Lecount had proposed startling her, to begin with. From his resi- 
dences he passed smoothly to himself, and poured his whole family 
history (in the character of Mr. Bygrave) into the housekeeper’s ears 
—not forgetting his brother’s grave in Honduras, with the monu- 


NO NAMES. 


321 


ment by the self-taught negro artist, and his brother’s hugely cor- 
pulent widow, on the ground-floor of the boarding-house at Chelten- 
ham. As a means of giving Magdalen time to compose herself, this 
outburst of autobiographical information attained its object, but it 
answered no other purpose. Mrs. Lecount listened, without being 
imposed on by a single word the captain said to her. He merely 
confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of taking Noel Van- 
stone into her confidence before she had facts to help her against 
Captain Wragge’s otherwise unassailable position in the identity 
which he had assumed. She quietly waited until he had done, and 
then returned to the charge. 

“ It is a coincidence that your uncle should have once resided in 
Vauxhall Walk,” she said, addressing herself to Magdalen. a Mr. 
Noel has a house in the same place, and we lived there before we 
came to Aldborough. May I inquire, Miss Bygrave, whether you 
know any thing of a lady named Miss Garth ?” 

This time she put the question before the captain could interfere. 
Magdalen ought to have been prepared for it by what had already 
passed in her presence, but her nerves had been shaken by the ear- 
lier events of the day ; and she could only answer the question in 
the negative, after an instant’s preliminary pause to control herself. 
Her hesitation was of too momentary a nature to attract the atten- 
tion of any unsuspicious person. But it lasted long enough to con- 
firm Mrs. Lecount’s private convictions, and to encourage her to ad- 
vance a little further. 

“ I only asked,” she continued, steadily fixing her eyes on Magda- 
len, steadily disregarding the efforts which Captain Wragge made to 
join in the conversation, “ because Miss Garth is a stranger to me, 
and I am curious to find out what I can about her. The day before 
we left town, Miss Bygrave, a person who presented herself under 
the name I have mentioned paid us a visit under very extraordinary 
circumstances.” 

With a smooth, ingratiating manner, with a refinement of contempt 
which was little less than devilish in its ingenious assumption of the 
language of pity, she now boldly described Magdalen’s appearance 
in disguise in Magdalen’s own presence. She slightingly referred to 
the master and mistress of Combe-Raven as persons who had always 
annoyed the elder and more respectable branch of the family ; she 
mourned over the children as following their parents’ example, an tf 
attempting to take a mercenary advantage of Mr. Noel Vanstone, un- 
der the protection of a respectable person’s character and a respect- 
able person’s name. Cleverly including her master in the conversa- 
tion, so as to prevent the captain from effecting a diversion in thaf 
quarter; sparing no petty aggravation; striking at every tendei 
place which the tongue of a spiteful woman can wound, she would, 


322 


NO NAME. 


beyond all doubt, have carried her point, and tortured Magdalen 
into openly betraying herself, if Captain Wragge had not checked 
her in full career by a loud exclamation of alarm, and a sudden clutch 
at Magdalen’s wrist. 

“ Ten thousand pardons, my dear madam !” cried the captain. “ I 
Bee in my niece’s face, I feel in my niece’s pulse, that one of her vio- 
lent neuralgic attacks has come on again. My dear girl, why hesi- 
tate among friends to confess that you are in pain ? What mistimed 
politeness ! Her face shows she is suffering — doesn’t it, Mrs. Lecount ? 
Darting pains, Mr. Vanstone, darting pains on the left side of the 
head. Pull down your veil, my dear, and lean on me. Our friends 
will excuse you ; our excellent friends will excuse you for the rest 
of the day.” 

Before Mrs. Lecount could throw an instant’s doubt on the genu- 
ineness of the neuralgic attack, her master’s fidgety sympathy de- 
clared itself exactly as the captain had anticipated, in the most act- 
ive manifestations. He stopped the carriage, and insisted on an im- 
mediate change in the arrangement of the places — the comfortable 
back seat for Miss Bygrave and her uncle, the front seat for Lecount 
and himself. Had Lecount got her smelling - bottle ? Excellent 
creature ! let her give it directly to Miss Bygrave, and let the coach- 
man drive carefully. If the coachman shook Miss Bygrave he should 
not have a half-penny for himself. Mesmerism was frequently use- 
ful in these cases. Mr. Noel Yanstone’s father had been the most 
powerful mesmerist in Europe, and Mr. Noel Vanstone was his fa- 
ther’s son. Might he mesmerize? Might he order that infernal 
coachman to draw up in a shady place adapted for the purpose? 
Would medical help be preferred ? Could medical help be found 
any nearer than Aldborough ? That ass of a coachman didn’t know. 
Stop every respectable man who passed in a gig, and ask him if he 
was a doctor ! So Mr. Noel Vanstone ran on, with brief intervals 
for breathing-time, in a continually-ascending scale of sympathy and 
self-importance, throughout the drive home. 

Mrs. Lecount accepted her defeat without uttering a word. From 
the moment when Captain Wragge interrupted her, her thin lips 
closed and opened no more for the remainder of the journey. The 
warmest expressions of her master’s anxiety for the suffering young 
lady provoked from her no outward manifestations of anger. She 
took as little notice of him as possible. She paid no attention what- 
ever to the captain, whose exasperating consideration for his van- 
quished enemy made him more polite to her than ever. The nearer 
and the nearer they got to Aldborough, the more and more fixedly 
Mrs. Lecount’s hard black eyes looked at Magdalen reclining on the 
opposite seat, with her eyes closed and her veil down. 

It was only when the carriage stopped at North Shingles, and 


NO NAME. 


323 


when Captain Wragge was handing Magdalen out, that the house- 
keeper at last condescended to notice him. As he smiled and took 
off his hat at the carriage door, the strong restraint she had laid on 
herself suddenly gave way, and she flashed one look at him which 
scorched up the captain’s politeness on the spot. He turned at 
once, with a hasty acknowledgment of Noel Yanstone’s last sympa- 
thetic inquiries, and took Magdalen into the house. 

“ I told you she would show her claws,” he said. “ It is not my 
fault that she scratched you before I could stop her. She hasn’t 
hurt you, has she ?” 

“ She has hurt me, to some purpose,” said Magdalen — “she has 
given me the courage to go on. Say what must be done to-morrow, 
and trust me to do it.” She sighed heavily as she said those words, 
and went up to her room. 

Captain Wragge walked meditatively into the parlor, and sat 
down to consider. He felt by no means so certain as he could have 
wished of the next proceeding on the part of the enemy after the 
defeat of that day. The housekeeper’s farewell look had plainly 
informed him that she was not at the end of her resources yet, and 
the old militia-man felt the fall importance of preparing himself in 
good time to meet the next step which she took in advance. He 
lit a cigar, and bent liis wary mind on the dangers of the future. 

While Captain Wragge was considering in the parlor at North 
Shingles, Mrs. Lecount was meditating in her bedroom at Sea View. 
Her exasperation at the failure of her first attempt to expose the 
conspiracy had not blinded her to the instant necessity of making 
a second effort before Noel Yanstone’s growing infatuation got be- 
yond her control. The snare set for Magdalen having failed, the 
chance of entrapping Magdalen’s sister was the next chance to try. 
Mrs. Lecount ordered a cup of tea, opened her writing-case, and 
began the rough draft of a letter to be sent to Miss Yanstone, the 
elder, by the morrow’s post. 

So the day’s skirmish ended. The heat of the battle was yet to 
come. 


CHAPTER VI. 

All human penetration has its limits. Accurately as Captain 
Wragge had seen his way hitherto, even his sharp insight was now 
at fault. He finished his cigar with the mortifying conviction that 
he was totally unprepared for Mrs. Lecount’s next proceeding. 

In this emergency, his experience warned him that there was one 
safe course, and one only, which he could take. He resolved to try 
the confusing effect on the housekeeper of a complete change of 


324 


NO NAME. 


tactics before she had time to press her advantage and attack him 
in the dark. With this view he sent the servant up stairs to request 
that Miss Bygrave would come down and speak to him. 

“ I hope I don’t disturb you,” said the captain, when Magdalen 
entered the room. “ Allow me to apologize for the smell of tobacco, 
and to say two words on the subject of our next proceedings. To 
put it with my customary frankness, Mrs. Lecount puzzles me, and I 
propose to return the compliment by puzzling her. The course of 
action which I have to suggest is a very simple one. I have had 
the honor of giving you a severe neuralgic attack already, and I beg 
your permission (when Mr. Noel Yanstone sends to inquire to-mor- 
row morning) to take the further liberty of laying you up alto- 
gether. Question from Sea- view Cottage : ‘ How is Miss Bygrave 
this morning ?’ Answer from North Shingles : ‘ Much worse : Miss 
Bygrave is confined to her room.’ Question repeated every day, 
say for a fortnight : ‘ How is Miss Bygrave V Answer repeated, if 
necessary, for the same time : ‘No better.’ Can you bear the im- 
prisonment ? I see no objection to your getting a breath of fresh 
air the first thing in the morning, or the last thing at night. But 
for the whole of the day, there is no disguising it, you must put 
yourself in the same category with Mrs. Wragge — you must keep 
your room.” 

“ What is your object in wishing me to do this ?” inquired Mag- 
dalen. 

“ My object is twofold,” replied the captain. “ I blush for my 
own stupidity ; but the fact is, I can’t see my way plainly to Mrs. 
Lecount’s next move. All I feel sure of is, that she means to make 
another attempt at opening her master’s eyes to the truth. What- 
ever means she may employ to discover your identity, personal 
communication with you must be necessary to the accomplishment 
of her object. Very good. If I stop that communication, I put an 
obstacle in her way at starting — or, as we say at cards, I force her 
hand. Do you see the point ?” 

Magdalen saw it plainly. The captain went on. 

“ My second reason for shutting you up,” he said, “ refers entirely 
to Mrs. Lecount’s master. The growth of love, my dear girl, is, in 
one respect, unlike all other growths — it flourishes under adverse 
circumstances. Our first course of action is to make Mr. Noel Yan- 
stone feel the charm of your society. Our next is to drive him dis- 
tracted by the loss of it. I should have proposed a few more meet- 
ings, with a view to furthering this end, but for our present critical 
position toward Mrs. Lecount. As it is, we must trust to the effect 
you produced yesterday, and try the experiment of a sudden separa- 
tion rather sooner than I could have otherwise wished. I shall see 
Mr. Noel Yanstone, though you don’t ; and if there is a raw place 


NO NAME. 


325 


established anywhere about the region of that gentleman’s heart, 
trust me to hit him on it ! You are now in full possession of my 
views. Take your time to consider, and give me your answer— 
Yes or no.” 

“ Any change is for the better,” said Magdalen, “ which keeps me 
out of the company of Mrs. Lecount and her master ! Let it be as 
you wish.” 

She had hitherto answered faintly and wearily; but she spoke 
those last words with a heightened tone and a rising color — signs 
which warned Captain Wragge not to press her further. 

“ Very good,” said the captain. “As usual, we understand each 
other. I see you are tired ; and I won’t detain you any longer.” 

He rose to open the door, stopped half-way to it, and came back 
again. “Leave me to arrange matters with the servant down stairs,” 
he continued. “You can’t absolutely keep your bed, and we must 
purchase the girl’s discretion when she answers the door, without 
taking her into our confidence, of course. I will make her under- 
stand that she is to say you are ill, just as she might say you are 
not at home, as a way of keeping unwelcome acquaintances out of 
the house. Allow me to open the door for you. — I beg your pardon, 
you are going into Mrs. Wragge’s work-room instead of going to 
your own.” 

“ I know I am,” said Magdalen. “I wish to remove Mrs. Wragge 
from the miserable room she is in now, and to take her up stairs 
with me.” 

“ For the evening ?” 

“ For the whole fortnight.” 

Captain Wragge followed her into the dining-room, and wisely 
closed the door before he spoke again. 

“Do you seriously mean to inflict my wife’s society on yourself 
for a fortnight ?” he asked, in great surprise. 

“ Your wife is the only innocent creature in this guilty house,” 
she burst out vehemently. “ I must and will have her with me !” 

“Pray don’t agitate yourself,” said the captain. “Take Mrs. 
Wragge, by all means. I don’t want her.” Having resigned the 
partner of his existence in those terms, he discreetly returned to the 
parlor. “ The weakness of the sex !” thought the captain, tapping 
his sagacious head. “ Lay a strain on the female intellect, and the 
female temper gives way directly.” 

The strain to which the captain alluded was not confined that 
evening to the female intellect at North Shingles: it extended to 
the female intellect at Sea View. For nearly two hours Mrs. Le- 
count sat at her desk writing, correcting, and writing again, before 
she could produce a letter to Miss Yanstone, the elder, which ex- 
actly accomplished the object she wanted to attain. At last the 


326 


NO NAME. 


rough draft was completed to her satisfaction ; and she made a fair 
copy of it forthwith, to be posted the next day. 

Her letter thus produced was a masterpiece of ingenuity. After 
the first preliminary sentences, the housekeeper plainly informed 
Norah of the appearance of the visitor in disguise at Yauxhall 
Walk; of the conversation which passed at the interview; and of 
her own suspicion that the person claiming to be Miss Garth was, 
in all probability, the younger Miss Yanstone herself. Having told 
the truth thus far, Mrs. Lecount next proceeded to say that her mas- 
ter was in possession of evidence which would justify him in putting 
the law in force ; that he knew the conspiracy with which he was 
threatened to be then in process of direction against him at Aid- 
borough ; and that he only hesitated to protect himself in deference 
to family considerations, and in the hope that the elder Miss Yan- 
stone might so influence her sister as to render it unnecessary to 
proceed to extremities. 

Under these circumstances (the letter continued) it was plainly 
necessary that the disguised visitor to Yauxhall Walk should be 
properly identified ; for if Mrs. Lecount’s guess proved to be wrong, 
and if the person turned out to be a stranger, Mr. Noel Yanstone 
was positively resolved to prosecute in his own defense. Events at 
Aldborough, on which it was not necessary to dwell, would enable 
Mrs. Lecount in a few days to gain sight of the suspected person 
in her own character. But as the housekeeper was entirely unac- 
quainted with the younger Miss Yanstone, it was obviously desirable 
that some better-informed person should, in this particular, take the 
matter in hand. If the elder Miss Yanstone happened to be at lib- 
erty to come to Aldborough herself, would she kindly write and 
say so ? — and Mrs. Lecount would write back again to appoint a 
day. If, on the other hand, Miss Yanstone was prevented from 
taking the journey, Mrs. Lecount suggested that her reply should 
contain the fullest description of her sister’s personal appearance — 
should mention any little peculiarities which might exist in the way 
of marks on her face or her hands — and should state (in case she 
had written lately) what the address was in her last letter, and fail- 
ing that, what the post-mark was on the envelope. With this in- 
formation to help her, Mrs. Lecount would, in the interest of the 
misguided young lady herself, accept the responsibility of privately 
identifying her, and would write back immediately to acquaint the 
elder Miss Yanstone with the result. 

The difficulty of sending this letter to the right address gave Mrs. 
Lecount very little trouble. Remembering the name of the lawyer 
who had pleaded the cause of the two sisters in Michael Yanstone’s 

time, she directed her letter to “ Miss Yanstone, care of Pen- 

dril, Esquire, London.” This she inclosed in a second envelope, 


NO NAME. 


327 


addressed to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s solicitor, with a line inside, re- 
questing that gentleman to send it at once to the office of Mr. Pen- 
dril. 

“ Now,” thought Mrs. Lecount, as she locked the letter up in her 
desk, preparatory to posting it the next day with her own hand, 
“ now I have got her !” 

The next morning the servant from Sea View came, with her mas- 
ter’s compliments, to make inquiries after Miss Bygrave’s health. 
Captain Wragge’s bulletin was duly announced — Miss Bygrave was 
so ill as to be confined to her room. 

On the reception of this intelligence, Noel Vanstone’s anxiety led 
him to call at North Shingles himself when he went out for his 
afternoon walk. Miss Bygrave was no better. He inquired if he 
could see Mr. Bygrave. The worthy captain was prepared to meet 
this emergency. He thought a little irritating suspense would do 
Noel Vanstone no barm, and he had carefully charged the servant, 
in case of necessity, with her answer : “ Mr. Bygrave begged to be 
excused ; he was not able to see any one.” 

On the second day inquiries were made as before, by message in 
the morning, and by Noel Vanstone himself in the afternoon. The 
morning answer (relating to Magdalen) was, “ a shade better.” The 
afternoon answer (relating to Captain Wragge) was, “ Mr. Bygrave 
has just gone out.” That evening Noel Vanstone’s temper was very 
uncertain, and Mrs. Lecount’s patience and tact were sorely tried in 
the effort to avoid offending him. 

On the third morning the report of the suffering young lady was 
less favorable — “Miss Bygrave was still very poorly, and not able 
to leave her bed.” The servant returning to Sea View with this 
message, met the postman, and took into the breakfast-room with 
her two letters addressed to Mrs. Lecount. 

The first letter was in a handwriting familiar to the housekeeper. 
It was from the medical attendant on her invalid brother at Zurich ; 
and it announced that the patient’s malady had latterly altered in 
so marked a manner for the better that there was every hope now r 
of preserving his life. 

The address on the second letter was in a strange handwriting. 
Mrs. Lecount, concluding that it was the answer from Miss Van- 
stone, waited to read it until breakfast was over, and she could re- 
tire to her own room. 

She opened the letter, looked at once for the name at the end, 
and started a little as she read it. The signature was not u Norah 
Vanstone,” but “ Harriet Garth.” 

Miss Garth announced that the elder Miss Vanstone had, a week 


328 


NO NAME. 


since, accepted an engagement as governess, subject to the condi- 
tion of joining the family of her employer at their temporary resi- 
dence in the south of France, and of returning with them when 
they came back to England, probably in a month or six weeks’ 
time. During the interval of this necessary absence Miss Yanstone 
had requested Miss Garth to open all her letters, her main object 
in making that arrangement being to provide for the speedy an- 
swering of any communication which might arrive for her from her 
sister. Miss Magdalen Yanstone had not written since the middle 
of July — on which occasion the post-mark on the letter showed that 
it must have been posted in London, in the district of Lambeth — 
and her elder sister had left England in a state of the most distress- 
ing anxiety on her account. 

Having completed this explanation, Miss Garth then mentioned 
that family circumstances prevented her from traveling personally 
to Aldborough to assist Mrs. Lecount’s object, but that she was pro- 
vided with a substitute, in every way fitter for the purpose, in the 
person of Mr. Pendril. That gentleman was well acquainted with 
Miss Magdalen Yanstone, and his professional experience and dis- 
cretion would render his assistance doubly valuable. He had kind- 
ly consented to travel to Aldborough whenever it might be thought 
necessary. But as his time was very valuable, Miss Garth specially 
requested that he might not be sent for until Mrs. Lecount was quite 
sure of the day on which his services might be required. 

While proposing this arrangement, Miss Garth added that she 
thought it right to furnish her correspondent with a written de- 
scription of the younger Miss Yanstone as well. An emergency 
might happen which would allow Mrs. Lecount no time for secur- 
ing Mr. Pendril’s services ; and the execution of Mr. Noel Yanstone’s 
intentions toward the unhappy girl who was the object of his for 
bearance might be fatally delayed by an unforeseen difficulty in 
establishing her identity. The personal description, transmitted 
under these circumstances, then followed. It omitted no personal 
peculiarity by which Magdalen could be recognized, and it included 
the “ two little moles close together on the left side of the neck,” 
which had been formerly mentioned in the printed handbills sent 
to York. 

In conclusion, Miss Garth expressed her fears that Mrs. Lecount’s 
suspicions were only too likely to be proved true. While, however, 
there was the faintest chance that the conspiracy might turn out 
to be directed by a stranger, Miss Garth felt bound, in gratitude 
toward Mr. Noel Yanstone, to assist the legal proceedings which 
would in that case be instituted. She accordingly appended her 
own formal denial — which she would personally repeat if necessary 
—of any identity between herself and the person in disguise who 


NO NAME. 


329 


had made use of her name. She was the Miss Garth who had filled 
the situation of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone’ s governess, and she 
had never in her life been in, or near, the neighborhood of Yauxhall 
Walk. 

With this disclaimer, and with the writer’s fervent assurances 
that she would do all for Magdalen’s advantage which her sister 
might have done if her sister had been in England, the letter con- 
cluded. It was signed in full, and was dated with the business- 
like accuracy in such matters which had always distinguished Miss 
Garth’s character. 

This letter placed a formidable weapon in the housekeeper’s 
hands. 

It provided a means of establishing Magdalen’s identity through 
the intervention of a lawyer by profession. It contained a personal 
description minute enough to be used to advantage, if necessary, 
before Mr. Pendril’s appearance. It presented a signed exposure 
of the false Miss Garth under the hand of the true Miss Garth ; and 
it established the fact that the last letter received by the elder Miss 
Vanstone from the younger had been posted (and therefore proba- 
bly written) in the neighborhood of Yauxhall Walk. If any later 
letter had been received with the Aldborough postmark, the chain 
of evidence, so far as the question of localities was concerned, might 
doubtless have been more complete. But as it was, there was testi- 
mony enough (aided as that testimony might be by the fragment 
of the brown alpaca dress still in Mrs. Lecount’s possession) to raise 
the veil which hung over the conspiracy, and to place Mr. Noel 
Vanstone face to face with the plain and startling truth. 

The one obstacle which now stood in the way of immediate action 
on the housekeeper’s part was the obstacle of Miss Bygrave’s present 
seclusion within the limits of her own room. The question of gain- 
ing personal access to her was a question which must be decided 
before any communication could be opened with Mr. Pendril. Mrs. 
Lecount put on her bonnet at once, and called at North Shingles to 
try what discoveries she could make for herself before post-time. 

On this occasion Mr. Bygrave was at home, and she was admitted 
without the least difficulty. 

Careful consideration that morning had decided Captain Wragge 
on advancing matters a little nearer to the crisis. The means by 
which he proposed achieving this result made it necessary for him 
to see the housekeeper and her master separately, and to set them 
at variance by producing two totally opposite impressions relating 
to himself on their minds. Mrs. Lecount’s visit, therefore, instead 
of causing him any embarrassment, was the most welcome occur- 
rence he could have wished for. He received her in the parlor with 


330 


NO NAME. 


a marked restraint of manner for which she was quite unprepared. 
His ingratiating smile was gone, and an impenetrable solemnity of 
countenance appeared in its stead. 

“ I have ventured to intrude on you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “ to 
express the regret with which both my master and I have heard of 
Miss Bygrave’s illness. Is there no improvement ?” 

“ No, ma’am,” replied the captain, as briefly as possible. “ My 
niece is no better.” 

“ I have had some experience, Mr. By grave, in nursing. If I could 
be of any use — ” 

“ Thank you, Mrs. Lecount. There is no necessity for our taking 
advantage of your kindness.” 

This plain answer was followed by a moment’s silence. The 
housekeeper felt some little perplexity. What had become of Mr. 
Bygrave’s elaborate courtesy, and Mr. Bygrave’s many words ? Did 
he want to offend her ? If he did, Mrs. Lecount then and there de- 
termined that he should not gain his object. 

“ May I inquire the nature of the illness ?” she persisted. “ It is 
not connected, I hope, with our excursion to Dunwich ?” 

“ I regret to say, ma’am,” replied the captain, “ it began with that 
neuralgic attack in the carriage.” 

“ So ! so !” thought Mrs. Lecount. “ He doesn’t even try to make 
me think the illness a real one ; he throws off the mask at starting. 
Is it a nervous illness, sir ?” she added, aloud. 

The captain answered by a solemn affirmative inclination of the 
head. 

“ Then you have two nervous sufferers in the house, Mr. Bygrave ?” 

“ Yes, ma’am — two. My wife and my niece.” 

“ That is rather a strange coincidence of misfortunes.” 

“ It is, ma’am. Very strange.” 

In spite of Mrs. Lecount’s resolution not to be offended, Captain 
Wragge’s exasperating insensibility to every stroke she aimed at 
him began to ruffle her. She was conscious of some little difficulty 
in securing her self-possession before she could say any thing more. 

“ Is there no immediate hope,” she resumed, “ of Miss Bygrave 
being able to leave her room ?” 

“ None whatever, ma’am.” 

“ You are satisfied, I suppose, with the medical attendance ?” 

“ I have no medical attendance,” said the captain, composedly. 
“ I watch the case myself.” 

The gathering venom in Mrs. Lecount swelled up at that reply, 
and overflowed at her lips. 

“ Your smattering of science, sir,” she said, with a malicious smile, 
u includes, I presume, a smattering of medicine as well ?” 

44 It does, ma’am,” answered the captain, without the slightest 


NO NAME. 


331 


disturbance of face or manner. “ I know as much of one as I dc 
of the other.” 

The tone in which he spoke those words left Mrs. Lecount but 
one dignified alternative. She rose to terminate the interview. 
The temptation of the moment proved too much for her, and she 
could not resist casting the shadow of a threat over Captain Wragge 
at parting. 

“ I defer thanking you, sir, for the manner in which you have re- 
ceived me,” she said, “ until 1 can pay my debt of obligation to some 
purpose. In the mean time I am glad to infer, from the absence or 
a medical attendant in the house, that Miss By grave’s illness is much 
less serious than I had supposed it to be when I came here.” 

“I never contradict a lady, ma’am,” rejoined the incorrigible cap- 
tain. “ If it is your pleasure, when we next meet, to think my niece 
quite well, I shall bow resignedly to the expression of your opinion.” 
With those words, he followed the housekeeper into the passage, and 
politely opened the door for her. “I mark the trick, ma’am?” he 
said to himself, as he closed it again. “The trump-card in your 
hand is a sight of my niece, and I’ll take care you don’t play it !” 

He returned to the parlor, and composedly awaited the next event 
which was likely to happen — a visit from Mrs. Lecount’s master. In 
less than an hour results justified Captain Wragge’s anticipations, 
and Noel Yanstone walked in. 

“ My dear sir !” cried the captain, cordially seizing his visitor’s re- 
luctant hand, “ I know what you have come for. Mrs. Lecount has 
told you of her visit here, and has no doubt declared that my niece’s 
illness is a mere subterfuge. You feel surprised — you feel hurt — you 
suspect me of trifling with your kind sympathies — in short, you re- 
quire an explanation. That explanation you shall have. Take a 
seat, Mr. Vanstone. I am about to throw myself on your sense and 
judgment as a man of the world. I acknowledge that we are in a 
false position, sir ; and I tell you plainly at the outset — your house- 
keeper is the cause of it.” 

For once in his life, Noel Yanstone opened his eyes. “ Lecount !” 
he exclaimed, in the utmost bewilderment. 

“ The same, sir,” replied Captain Wragge. “ I am afraid I offended 
Mrs. Lecount, when she came here this morning, by a want of cordial- 
ity in my manner. I am a plain man, and I can’t assume what I don’t 
feel. Far be it from me to breathe a word against your housekeep- 
er’s character. She is, no doubt, a most excellent and trustworthy 
woman, but she has one serious failing common to persons at her 
time of life who occupy her situation — she is jealous of her influence 
over her master, although you may not have observed it.” 

u I beg your pardon,” interposed Noel Yanstone ; “ my observation 
<s remarkably quick. Nothing escapes me.” 


332 


NO NAME* 


“In that case, sir,” resumed the captain, “you can not fail to have 
noticed that Mrs. Lecount has allowed her jealousy to affect her con- 
duct toward my niece ?” 

Noel Yanstone thought of the domestic passage at arms between 
Mrs. Lecount and himself when his guests of the evening had left 
Sea View, and failed to see his way to any direct reply. He ex- 
pressed the utmost surprise and distress — he thought Lecount had 
done her best to be agreeable on the drive to Dunwich — he hoped 
and trusted there was some unfortunate mistake. 

“ Do you mean to say, sir,” pursued the captain, severely, “ that 
you have not noticed the circumstance yourself? As a man of hon- 
or, and a man of observation, you can’t tell me that ! Your house- 
keeper’s superficial civility has not hidden your housekeeper’s real 
feeling. My niece has seen it, and so have you, and so have I. My 
niece, Mr. Yanstone, is a sensitive, high-spirited girl; and she has 
positively declined to cultivate Mrs. Lecount’s society for the future. 
Don’t misunderstand me ! To my niece as well as to myself, the at- 
traction of your society, Mr. Yanstone, remains the same. Miss By- 
grave simply declines to be an apple of discord (if you will permit 
the classical allusion) cast into your household. I think she is right 
so far, and I frankly confess that I have exaggerated a nervous in- 
disposition, from which she is really suffering, into a serious illness — 
purely and entirely to prevent these two ladies for the present from 
meeting every day on the Parade, and from carrying unpleasant im- 
pressions of each other into your domestic establishment and mine.” 

“ I allow nothing unpleasant in my establishment,” remarked Noel 
Yanstone. “ I’m master — you must have noticed that already, Mr. 
Bygrave — I’m master.” 

“ No doubt of it, my dear sir. But to live morning, noon, and 
night in the perpetual exercise of your authority is more like the 
life of a governor of a prison than the life of a master of a household. 
The wear and tear — consider the wear and tear.” 

“ It strikes you in that light, does it?” said Noel Yanstone, soothed 
by Captain Wragge’s ready recognition of his authority. “I don’t 
know that you’re not right. But I must take some steps directly. 
I won’t be made ridiculous — I’ll send Lecount away altogether, soon- 
er than be made ridiculous.” His color rose, and he folded his lit- 
tle arms fiercely. Captain Wragge’s artfully-irritating explanation 
had awakened that dormant suspicion of his housekeeper’s influence 
over him which habitually lay hidden in his mind, and which Mrs. 
Lecount was now not present to charm back to repose as usual. 
“ What must Miss Bygrave think of me !” he exclaimed, with a sud- 
den outburst of vexation. “ I’ll send Lecount away. Damme, I’ll 
send Lecount away on the spot !” 

“ No, no, no I” said the captain, whose interest it was to avoid driv- 


NO NAME. 


333 


ing Mrs. Lecount to any desperate extremities. “ Why take strong 
measures when mild measures will do ? Mrs. Lecount is an old serv- 
ant ; Mrs. Lecount is attached and useful. She has this little draw- 
back of jealousy — jealousy of her domestic position with her bache- 
lor master. She sees you paying courteous attention to a handsome 
young lady ; she sees that young lady properly sensible of your po- 
liteness ; and, poor soul, she loses her temper ! What is the obvious 
remedy ? Humor her — make a manly concession to the weaker sex. 
If Mrs. Lecount is with you, the next time we meet on the Parade, 
walk the other way. If Mrs. Lecount is not with you, give us the 
pleasure of your company by all means. In short, my dear sir, try 
the suamter in modo (as we classical men say) before you commit 
yourself to the fovtiter in re /” 

There was one excellent reason why Noel Yanstone should take 
Captain Wragge’s conciliatory advice. An open rupture with Mrs. 
Lecount — even if he could have summoned the courage to face it 
— would imply the recognition of her claims to a provision, in ac- 
knowledgment of the services she had rendered to his father and to 
himself. His sordid nature quailed within him at the bare prospect 
of expressing the emotion of gratitude in a pecuniary form ; and, 
after first consulting appearances by a show of hesitation, he con- 
sented to adopt the captain’s suggestion, and to humor Mrs. Le- 
count. 

“ But I must be considered in this matter,” proceeded Noel Yan- 
stone. “My concession to Lecount’s weakness must not be mis- 
understood. Miss Bygrave must not be allowed to suppose I am 
afraid of my housekeeper.” 

The captain declared that no such idea ever had entered, or ever 
could enter, Miss Bygrave’s mind. Noel Yanstone returned to the 
subject nevertheless, again and again, with his customary pertinaci- 
ty. Would it be indiscreet if he asked leave to set himself right 
personally with Miss By grave ? Was there any hope that he might 
have the happiness of seeing her on that day ? or if not, on the next 
day? or if not, on the day after? Captain Wragge answered cau- 
tiously : he felt the importance of not rousing Noel Yanstone’s dis- 
trust by too great an alacrity in complying with his wishes. 

“An interview to-day, my dear sir, is out of the question,” he 
said. “She is not well enough; she wants repose. To-morrow I 
propose taking her out before the heat of the day begins — not mere- 
ly to avoid embarrassment, after what has happened with Mrs. Le- 
count, but because the morning air and the morning quiet are es- 
sential in these nervous cases. We are early people here — we shall 
start at seven o’clock. If you are early too, and if you would like 
to join us, I need hardly say that we can feel no objection to your 
company on our morning walk. The hour, I am aware, is an um 


334 


NO NAME. 


usual one — but later in the day my niece may be resting on the 
sofa, and may not be able to see visitors.” 

Having made this proposal purely for the purpose of enabling 
Noel Yanstone to escape to North Shingles at an hour in the morn- 
ing when his housekeeper would be probably in bed, Captain 
Wragge left him to take the hint, if he could, as indirectly as it had 
been given. He proved sharp enough (the case being one in which 
his own interests were concerned) to close with the proposal on the 
spot. Politely declaring that he was always an early man when the 
morning presented any special attraction to him, he accepted the 
appointment for seven o’clock, and rose soon afterward to take his 
leave. 

“ One word at parting,” said Captain Wragge. “ This conversa- 
tion is entirely between ourselves. Mrs. Lecount must know noth 
ing of the impression she has produced on my niece. I have only 
mentioned it to you to account for my apparently churlish conduct, 
and to satisfy your own mind. In confidence, Mr. Yanstone — strict- 
ly in confidence. Good-morning !” 

With these parting words, the captain bowed his visitor out. 
Unless some unexpected disaster occurred, he now saw his way 
safely to the end of the enterprise. He had gained two important 
steps in advance that morning. He had sown the seeds of variance 
between the housekeeper and her master, and he had given Noel 
Vanstone a common interest with Magdalen and himself, in keeping 
a secret from Mrs. Lecount. “ We have caught our man,” thought 
Captain Wragge, cheerfully rubbing his hands — “we have caught 
our man at last !” 

On leaving North Shingles, Noel Yanstone walked straight home, 
fully restored to his place in his own estimation, and sternly deter- 
mined to carry matters with a high hand if he found himself in col- 
lision with Mrs. Lecount. 

The housekeeper received her master at the door with her mild- 
est manner and her gentlest smile. She addressed him with down- 
cast eyes ; she opposed to his contemplated assertion of independ- 
ence a barrier of impenetrable respect. 

“May I venture to ask, sir,” she began, “if your visit to North 
Shingles has led you to form the same conclusion as mine on the 
subject of Miss Bygrave’s illness ?” 

“Certainly not, Lecount. I consider your conclusion to have 
been both hasty and prejudiced.” 

“ I am sorry to hear it, sir. I felt hurt by Mr. Bygrave’s rude re- 
ception of me, but I was not aware that my judgment was prejudiced 
by it. Perhaps he received you , sir, with a warmer welcome ?” 

“ He received me like a gentleman — that is all I think it necessa- 
ry to say, Lecount — he received me like a gentleman.” 


















IK)3E! what did it 



NO NAME. 


337 


This answer satisfied Mrs. Lecount on the one doubtful point that 
had perplexed her. Whatever Mr. Bygrave’s sudden coolness to- 
ward herself might mean, his polite reception of her master implied 
that the risk of detection had not daunted him, and that the plot 
was still in full progress. The housekeeper’s eyes brightened ; she 
had expressly calculated on this result. After a moment’s thinking, 
she addressed her master with another question : 

“ You will probably visit Mr. By grave again, sir?” 

“ Of course I shall visit him — if I please.” 

“ And perhaps see Miss Bygrave, if she gets better ?” 

“ Why not ? I should be glad to know why not ? Is it necessary 
to ask your leave first, Lecount ?” 

“ By no means, sir. As you have often said (and as I have often 
agreed with you), you are master. It may surprise you to hear it, 
Mr. Noel, but I have a private reason for wishing that you should 
see Miss By grave again.” 

Mr. Noel started a little, and looked at his housekeeper with 
some curiosity. 

“ I have a strange fancy of my own, sir, about that young lady,” 
proceeded Mrs. Lecount. “ If you will excuse my fancy, and in- 
dulge it, you will do me a favor for which I shall be very grateful.” 

“A fancy?” repeated her master, in growing surprise. “What 
fancy ?” 

“ Only this, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. 

She took from one of the neat little pockets of her apron a morsel 
of note-paper, carefully folded into the smallest possible compass, 
and respectfully placed it in Noel Yanstone’s hands. 

“ If you are willing to oblige an old and faithful servant, Mr. 
Noel,” she said, in a very quiet and very impressive manner, “ you 
will kindly put that morsel of paper into your waistcoat-pocket ; 
you will open and read it, for the first time, when you are next in 
Miss Bygrave's company, and you will say nothing of what has now 
passed between us to any living creature, from this time to that. I 
promise to explain my strange request, sir, when you have done 
what I ask, and when your next interview with Miss Bygrave has 
come to an end.” 

She courtesied with her best grace, and quietly left the room. 

Noel Yanstone looked from the folded paper to the door, and 
from the door back to the folded paper, in unutterable astonish- 
ment. A mystery in his own house ! under his own nose ! What 
did it mean ? 

It meant that Mrs. Lecount had not wasted her time that morning. 
While the captain was casting the net over his visitor at North 
Shingles, the housekeeper was steadily mining the ground under 
his feet- The folded paper contained nothing less than a carefully- 


338 


NO NAME. 


written extract from the personal description of Magdalen in Miss 
Garth’s letter. With a daring ingenuity which even Captain Wragge 
might have envied, Mrs. Lecount had found her instrument for ex- 
posing the conspiracy in the unsuspecting person of the victim 
himself 1 


CHAPTER VH. 

Late that evening, when Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge came back 
from their walk in the dark, the captain stopped Magdalen on her 
way up stairs to inform her of the proceedings of the day. He add- 
ed the expression of his opinion that the time had come for bring- 
ing Noel Vanstone, with the least possible delay, to the point of 
making a proposal. She merely answered that she understood him, 
and that she would do what was required of her. Captain Wragge 
requested her in that case to oblige him by joining a walking ex- 
cursion in Mr. Noel Yanstone’s company at seven o’clock the next 
morning. “ I will be ready,” she replied. “ Is there any thing 
more ?” There was nothing more. Magdalen bade him good-night, 
and returned to her own room. 

She had shown the same disinclination to remain any longer than 
was necessary in the captain’s company throughout the three days 
of her seclusion in the house. 

During all that time, instead of appearing to weary of Mrs. 
Wragge’s society, she had patiently, almost eagerly, associated her- 
self with her companion’s one absorbing pursuit. She who had 
often chafed and fretted in past days under the monotony of her 
life in the freedom of Combe-Raven, now accepted without a mur- 
mur the monotony of her life at Mrs. Wragge’s work-table. She 
who had hated the sight of her needle and thread in old times — 
who had never yet worn an article of dress of her own making — now 
toiled as anxiously over the making of Mrs. Wragge’s gown, and 
bore as patiently with Mrs. Wragge’s blunders, as if the sole object 
of her existence had been the successful completion of that one dress. 
Any thing was welcome to her — the trivial difficulties of fitting a 
gown : the small, ceaseless chatter of the poor half-witted creature 
who was so proud of her assistance, and so happy in her company — 
any thing was welcome that shut her out from the coming future, 
from the destiny to which she stood self-condemned. That sorely- 
wounded nature was soothed by such a trifle now as the grasp of 
her companion’s rough and friendly hand — that desolate heart was 
cheered, when night parted them, by Mrs. Wragge’s kiss. 

The captain’s isolated position in the house produced no depress- 
ing effect on the captain’s easy and equal spirits. Instead of resent- 


NO NAME. 


339 


ing Magdalen’s systematic avoidance of his society, he looked to 
results, and highly approved of it. The more she neglected him 
for his wife, the more directly useful she became in the character of 
Mrs. Wragge’s self-appointed guardian. He had more than once 
seriously contemplated revoking the concession which had been ex- 
torted from him, and removing his wife, at his own sole responsi- 
bility, out of harm’s way ; and he had only abandoned the idea on 
discovering that Magdalen’s resolution to keep Mrs. Wragge in her 
own company was really serious. While the two were together, his 
main anxiety was set at rest. They kept their door locked by his 
own desire while he was out of the house, and, whatever Mrs. 
Wragge might do, Magdalen was to be trusted not to open it until 
he came back. That night Captain Wragge enjoyed his cigar with 
a mind at ease, and sipped his brandy-and-water in happy ignorance 
of the pitfall which Mrs. Lecount had prepared for him in the 
morning. 

Punctually at seven o’clock Noel Yanstone made his appearance. 
The moment he entered the room, Captain Wragge detected a 
change in his visitor’s look and manner. “ Something wrong !” 
thought the captain. “We have not done with Mrs. Lecount yet.” 

“How is Miss Bygrave this morning?” asked Noel Yanstone. 
“Well enough, I hope, for our early walk?” His half-closed eyes, 
weak and watery with the morning light and the morning air, look- 
ed about the room furtively, and he shifted his place in a restless 
manner from one chair to another, as he made those polite inquiries. 

“ My niece is better — she is dressing for the walk,” replied the 
captain, steadily observing his restless little friend while he spoke. 
“ Mr. Yanstone !” he added, on a sudden, “ I am a plain Englishman 
— excuse my blunt way of speaking my mind. You don’t meet me 
this morning as cordially as you met me yesterday. There is some- 
thing unsettled in your face. I distrust that housekeeper of yours, 
sir ! Has she been presuming on your forbearance ? Has she been 
trying to poison your mind against me or my niece ?” 

If Noel Yanstone had obeyed Mrs. Lecount’s injunctions, and had 
kept her little morsel of note-paper folded in his pocket until the 
time came to use it, Captain Wragge’s designedly blunt appeal 
might not have found him unprepared with an answer. But curi- 
osity had got the better of him ; he had opened the note at night, 
and again in the morning; it had seriously perplexed and startled 
him ; and it had left his mind far too disturbed to allow him the 
possession of his ordinary resources. He hesitated ; and his answer, 
when he succeeded in making it, began with a prevarication. 

Captain Wragge stopped him before he had got beyond his first 
sentence. 

u Pardon me, sir, ” said the captain, in his loftiest manner. “ If 


340 


NO NAME. 


you have secrets to keep, you have only to say so, and I have done. 

I intrude on no man’s secrets. At the same time, Mr. Yanstone, you 
must allow me to recall to your memory that I met you yesterday 
without any reserves on my side. I admitted you to my frankest 
and fullest confidence, sir — and, highly as I prize the advantages 
of your society, I can’t consent to cultivate your friendship on any 
other than equal terms.” He threw open his respectable frock-coat, 
and surveyed his visitor with a manly and virtuous severity. 

“ I mean no offense !” cried Noel Yanstone, piteously. “ Why do 
you interrupt me, Mr. Bygrave ? Why don’t you let me explain ? I 
mean no offense.” 

“ No offense is taken, sir,” said the captain. “ You have a perfect 
right to the exercise of your own discretion. I am not offended — 
I only claim for myself the same privilege which I accord to you.” 
He rose with great dignity and rang the bell. “ Tell Miss Bygrave,” 
he said to the servant, “ that our walk this morning is put off until 
another opportunity, and that I won’t trouble her to come down 
stairs.” 

This strong proceeding had the desired effect. Noel Yanstone 
vehemently pleaded for a moment’s private conversation before the 
message was delivered. Captain Wragge’s severity partially re- 
laxed. He sent the servant down stairs again, and, resuming his 
chair, waited confidently for results. In calculating the facilities 
for practicing on his visitor’s weakness, he had one great superiority 
over Mrs. Lecount. His judgment was not warped by latent female 
jealousies, and he avoided the error into which the housekeeper 
had fallen, self-deluded — the error of underrating the impression on 
Noel Yanstone that Magdalen had produced. One of the forces in 
this world which no middle-aged woman is capable of estimating 
at its full value, when it acts against her, is the force of beauty in a 
woman younger than herself. 

“You are so hasty, Mr. Bygrave — you won’t give me time — you 
won’t wait and hear what I have to say !” cried Noel Yanstone, pite- 
ously, when the servant had closed the parlor door. 

“ My family failing, sir — the blood of the Bygraves. Accept my 
excuses. We are alone, as you wished; pray proceed.” 

Placed between the alternatives of losing Magdalen’s society 
or betraying Mrs. Lecount, unenlightened by any suspicion of the 
housekeeper’s ultimate object, cowed by the immovable scrutiny 
of Captain Wragge’s inquiring eye, Noel Yanstone was not long in 
making his choice. He confusedly described his singular interview 
of the previous evening with Mrs. Lecount, and, taking the folded 
paper from his pocket, placed it in the captain’s hand. 

A suspicion of the truth dawned on Captain Wragge’s mind the 
moment he saw the mysterious note. He withdrew to the window 


NO NAME. 


341 


before he opened it. The first lines that attracted his attention 
were these : “ Oblige me, Mr. Noel, by comparing the young lady 
who is now in your company with the personal description which 
follows these lines, and which has been communicated to me by a 
friend. You shall know the name of the person described — which 
I have left a blank — as soon as the evidence of your own eyes has 
forced you to believe what you would refuse to credit on the unsup- 
ported testimony of Yirginie Lecount.” 

That was enough for the captain. Before he had read a word 
of the description itself, he knew what Mrs. Lecount had done, and 
felt, with a profound sense of humiliation, that his female enemy 
had taken him by surprise. 

There was no time to think ; the whole enterprise was threatened 
with irrevocable overthrow. The one resource in Captain Wragge’s 
present situation was to act instantly on the first impulse of his own 
audacity. Line by line he read on, and still the ready inventive- 
ness which had never deserted him yet failed to answer the call 
made on it now. He came to the closing sentence — to the last 
words which mentioned the two little moles on Magdalen’s neck. 
At that crowning point of the description, an idea crossed his mind ; 
his party-colored eyes twinkled; his curly lips twisted up at the 
corners ; Wragge was himself again. \ 

He wheeled round suddenly from the window, and looked Noel 
Yanstone straight in the face with a grimly-quiet suggestiveness of 
something serious to come. 

“ Pray, sir, do you happen to know any thing of Mrs. Lecount ’s 
family ?” he inquired. 

“A respectable family,” said Noel Yanstone — “that’s all I know. 
Why do you ask ?” 

“I am not usually a betting man,” pursued Captain Wragge. 
“ But on this occasion I will lay you any wager you like there is 
madness in your housekeeper’s family.” 

“Madness !” repeated Noel Yanstone, amazedly. 

“Madness!” reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with 
his forefinger. “ I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of in- 
sanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplora- 
ble document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had 
supposed for Mrs. Lecount’s behavior to my niece. It is clear to me 
that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously 
offended your housekeeper — who has been formerly connected, per- 
haps, with an outbreak of insanity in your housekeeper — and who 
is now evidently confused with my niece in your housekeeper’s 
wandering mind. That is my conviction, Mr. Yanstone. I may 
be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is this — neither you, nor 
any man, can assign a sane motive for the production of that in 


342 


NO NAME. 


comprehensible document, and for the use which you are requested 
to make of it.” 

“ I don’t think Lecount’s mad,” said Noel Yanstone, with a very 
blank look, and a very discomposed manner. “ It couldn’t have es- 
caped me, with my habits of observation ; it couldn’t possibly have 
escaped me if Lecount had been mad.” 

“Very good, my dear sir. In my opinion, she is the subject of 
an insane delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her 
senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I 
can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Le- 
count’s description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but 
for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course im- 
possible to tell my niece that she is to be made the subject of such 
a preposterous experiment as that note of yours suggests. But you 
can use your own eyes, Mr. Yanstone; you can keep your own coun- 
sel; and — mad or not — you can at least tell your housekeeper, on 
the testimony of your own senses, that she is wrong. Let me look 
at the description again. The greater part of it is not worth two 
straws for any purpose of identification ; hundreds of young ladies 
have tall figures, fair complexions, light brown hair, and light gray 
eyes. You will say, on the other hand, hundreds of young ladies 
have not got two little moles close together on the left side of the 
neck. Quite true. The moles supply us with what we scientific 
men call a Crucial Test. When my niece comes down stairs, sir, you 
have my full permission to take the liberty of looking at her neck.” 

Noel Yanstone expressed his high approval of the Crucial Test by 
smirking and simpering for the first time that morning. 

“ Of looking at her neck,” repeated the captain, returning the 
note to his visitor, and then making for the door. “ I will go up 
stairs myself, Mr. Yanstone,” he continued, “ and inspect Miss By- 
grave’s walking-dress. If she has innocently placed any obstacles 
in your way, if her hair is a little too low, or her frill is a little too 
high, I will exert my authority, on the first harmless pretext I can 
think of, to have those obstacles removed. All I ask is, that you 
will choose your opportunity discreetly, and that you will not allow 
my niece to suppose that her neck is the object of a gentleman’s 
inspection.” 

The moment he was out of the parlor Captain Wragge ascended 
the stairs at the top of his speed and knocked at Magdalen’s door. 
She opened it to him in her walking-dress, obedient to the signal 
agreed on between them which summoned her down stairs. 

“ What have you done with your paints and powders ?” asked the 
captain, without wasting a word in preliminary explanations. u They 
were not in the box of costumes which I sold for you at Birmingham 
Where are they ?” 


J 










NO NAME. 


345 


“ I have got them here,” replied Magdalen. “ What can you pos- 
sibly mean by wanting them now ?” 

“ Bring them instantly into my dressing-room — the whole collec- 
tion, brushes, palette, and every thing. Don’t waste time in asking 
questions ; I’ll tell you what has happened as we go on. Every 
moment is precious to us. Follow me instantly !” 

His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his 
strange proposal. Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics, 
and followed him into the dressing-room. He locked the door, 
placed her on a chair close to the light, and then told her what had 
happened. 

“We are on the brink of detection,” proceeded the captain, care- 
fully mixing his colors with liquid glue, and with a strong “ drier ” 
added from a bottle in his own possession. “There is only one 
chance for us (lift up your hair from the left side of your neck) — I 
have told Mr. Noel Yanstone to take a private opportunity of look- 
ing at you ; and I am going to give the lie direct to that she-devil 
Lecount by painting out your moles.” 

“ They can’t be painted out,” said Magdalen. “ No color will stop 
on them.” 

“ My color will,” remarked Captain Wragge. “I have tried a va- 
riety of professions in my time — the profession of painting among 
the rest. Did you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye ? I lived 
some months once in the neighborhood of Drury Lane entirely on 
Black Eyes. My flesh-color stood on bruises of all sorts, shades, and 
sizes, and it will stand, I promise you, on your moles.” 

With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump 
of opaque color which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had 
graduated as nearly as the materials would permit, to the color of 
Magdalen’s skin. After first passing a cambric handkerchief, with 
some white powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he de- 
signed to operate, he placed two layers of color on the moles with 
the tip of the brush. The process was performed in a few moments, 
and the moles, as if by magic, disappeared from view. Nothing but 
the closest inspection could have discovered the artifice by which 
they had been concealed : at the distance of two or three feet only, 
it was perfectly invisible. 

“ Wait here five minutes,” said Captain Wragge, “to let the paint 
dry — and then join us in the parlor. Mrs. Lecount herself would be 
puzzled if she looked at you now.” 

“ Stop !” said Magdalen. “ There is one thing you have not told 
me yet. How did Mrs. Lecount get the description which you read 
down stairs ? Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen 
the mark on my neck — it is too far back, and too high up ; my hair 
hides it.” 


346 


NO NAME. 


“ Who knows of the mark ?” asked Captain Wragge. 

She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollec- 
tion of Frank. 

“ My sister knows it,” she said, faintly. 

“ Mrs. Lecount may have written to your sister,” suggested the 
captain. 

“ Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger 
has a right to know ? Never ! never !” 

“ Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs. Lecount ? The mark 
was mentioned in the handbills at York. Who put it there ?” 

“Not Norah ! Perhaps Mr. Pendril. Perhaps Miss Garth.” 

“ Then Mrs. Lecount has written to Mr. Pendril or Miss Garth — 
more likely to Miss Garth. The governess would be easier to deal 
with than the lawyer.” 

“ What can she have said to Miss Garth ?” 

Captain Wragge considered a little. 

“I can’t say what Mrs. Lecount may have written,” he said, “but 
I can tell you what I should have written in Mrs. Lecount’s place. 
I should have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to 
begin with, and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to 
help a benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends.” 

The angry glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen’s eyes. 

“ What you would have done is what Mrs. Lecount has done,” she 
said, indign intly. “ Neither lawyer nor governess shall dispute my 
right to my own will and my own way. If Miss Garth thinks she 
can control my actions by corresponding with Mrs. Lecount, I will 
show Miss Garth she is mistaken ! It is high time, Captain Wragge, 
to have done with these wretched risks of discovery. We will take 
the short way to the end we have in view sooner than Mrs. Lecount 
or Miss Garth think for. How long can you give me to wring an 
offer of marriage out of that creature down stairs ?” 

“ I dare not give you long,” replied Captain Wragge. “ Now your 
friends know where you are, they may come down on us at a day’s 
notice. Could you manage it in a week ?” 

“ I’ll manage it in half the time,” she said, with a hard, defiant 
laugh. “ Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich, 
and take Mrs. Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company. 
Is the paint dry yet ? Go down stairs, and tell him I am coming di- 
rectly.” 

So, for the second time, Miss Garth’s well-meant efforts defeated 
their own end. So the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that 
would fain have held Magdalen back into the hand that drove her on. 

The captain returned to his visitor in the parlor, after first stop- 
ping on his way to issue his orders for the walking excursion to 
Mrs. Wragge. 


NO NAME. 


34*1 


“ I am shocked to have kept you waiting,” he said, sitting down 
again confidentially by Noel Vanstone’s side. “ My only excuse is, 
that my niece had accidentally dressed her hair so as to defeat our 
object. I have been persuading her to alter it, and young ladies are 
apt to be a little obstinate on questions relating to their toilet. Give 
her a chair on that side of you when she comes in, and take your 
look at her neck comfortably before we start for our walk.” 

Magdalen entered the room as he said those words, and, after the 
first greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with 
the most unsuspicious readiness. Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial 
Test on the spot, with the highest appreciation of the fair material 
which was the subject of experiment. Not the vestige of a mole was 
visible on any part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave’s 
neck. It mutely answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone’s 
half-closed eyes by the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs. Le- 
count. That one central incident in the events of the morning was, 
of all the incidents that had hitherto occurred, the most important 
in its results. That one discovery shook the housekeeper’s hold on 
her master as nothing had shaken it yet. 

In a few minutes Mrs. Wragge made her appearance, and excited 
as much surprise in Noel Vanstone’s mind as he was capable of feel- 
ing while absorbed in the enjoyment of Magdalen’s society. The 
walking-party left the house at once, directing their steps north- 
ward, so as not to pass the windows of Sea-view Cottage. To Mrs. 
Wragge’s unutterable astonishment, her husband, for the first time 
in the course of their married life, politely offered her his arm, and 
led her on in advance of the young people, as if the privilege of 
walking alone with her presented some special attraction to him ! 
“ Step out !” whispered the captain, fiercely. “ Leave your niece 
and Mr. Vanstone alone ! If I catch you looking back at them, I’ll 
put the Oriental Cashmere Robe on the top of the kitchen fire ! 
Turn your toes out, and keep step — confound you, keep step!” 
Mrs. Wragge kept step to the best of her limited ability. Her sturdy 
knees trembled under her. She firmly believed the captain was in- 
toxicated. 

The walk lasted for rather more than an hour. Before nine 
o’clock they were all back again at North Shingles. The ladies 
went at once into the house. Noel Vanstone remained with Captain 
Wragge in the garden. 

“ Well,” said the captain, “what do you think now of Mrs. Le- 
count ?” 

“Damn Lecount !” replied Noel Vanstone, in great agitation. 
“ I’m half inclined to agree with you. I’m half inclined to think 
my infernal housekeeper is mad.” 

He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the merest allusion to 


348 


NO NAME. 


Mrs. Lecounr was distasteful to him. His color came and went; 
his manner was absent and undecided ; he fidgeted restlessly about 
the garden walk. It would have been plain to a far less acute 
observation than Captain Wragge’s, that Magdalen had met his ad- 
vances by an unexpected grace and readiness of encouragement 
which had entirely overthrown his self-control. 

“ I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life !” he exclaimed, with 
a sudden outburst of enthusiasm. “ I hope Miss Bygrave feels all 
the better for it. Do you go out at the same time to-morrow morn- 
ing ? May I join you again ?” 

“ By all means, Mr. Vanstone,” said the captain, cordially. “ Ex- 
cuse me for returning to the subject — but what do you propose say- 
ing to Mrs. Lecount ?” 

“I don’t know. Lecount is a perfect nuisance! What would 
you do, Mr. Bygrave, if you were in my place ?” 

“Allow me to ask a question, my dear sir, before I tell you. 
What is your breakfast-hour ?” 

“ Half-past nine.” 

“ Is Mrs. Lecount an early riser ?” 

M No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I hate lazy women ! If 
you were in my place, what should you say to her ?” 

“I should say nothing,” replied Captain Wragge. “I should re- 
turn at once by the back way ; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in 
the front garden as if I was taking a turn before breakfast ; and I 
should leave her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. 
If she asks you whether you mean to come here to-day, say No. 
Secure a quiet life until circumstances force you to give her an 
answer. Then tell the plain truth — say that Mr. Bygrave’s niece 
and Mrs. Lecount’s description are at variance with each other in 
the most important particular, and beg that the subject may not be 
mentioned again. There is my advice. What do you think of it ?” 

If Noel Vanstone could have looked into his counselor’s mind, 
he might have thought the captain’s advice excellently adapted to 
serve the captain’s interests. As long as Mrs. Lecount could be kept 
in ignorance of her master’s visits to North Shingles, so long she 
would wait until the opportunity came for trying her experiment, 
and so long she might be trusted not to endanger the conspiracy 
by any further proceedings. Necessarily incapable of viewing Cap- 
tain Wragge’s advice under this aspect, Noel Vanstone simply look- 
ed at it as offering him a temporary means of escape from an expla- 
nation with his housekeeper. He eagerly declared that the course 
of action suggested to him should be followed to the letter, and re- 
turned to Sea View without further delay. 

On this occasion Captain Wragge’s anticipations were in no re- 
spect falsified by Mrs. Lecount’s conduct. She had no suspicion of 


NO NAME. 


349 


her master’s visit to North Shingles; she had made up her mind, 
if necessary, to wait patiently for his interview with Miss Bygrave 
until the end of the week ; and she did not embarrass him by any 
unexpected questions when he announced his intention of holding 
no personal communication with the Bygraves on that day. All 
she said was, “ Don’t you feel well enough, Mr. Noel ? or don’t you 
feel inclined ?” He answered, shortly, “ I don’t feel well enough 
and there the conversation ended. 

The next day the proceedings of the previous morning were ex- 
actly repeated. This time Noel Yanstone went home rapturously 
with a keepsake in his breast-pocket : he had taken tender posses- 
sion of one of Miss Bygrave’s gloves. At intervals during the day, 
whenever he was alone, he took out the glove and kissed it with a 
devotion which was almost passionate in its fervor. The miserable 
little creature luxuriated in his moments of stolen happiness with a 
speechless and stealthy delight which was a new sensation to him. 
The few young girls whom he had met with, in his father’s narrow 
circle at Zurich, had felt a mischievous pleasure in treating him like 
a quaint little plaything; the strongest impression he could make 
on their hearts was an impression in which their lap-dogs might 
have rivaled him ; the deepest interest he could create in them was 
the interest they might have felt in a new trinket or a new dress. 
The only women who had hitherto invited his admiration, and taken 
his compliments seriously, had been women whose charms were on 
the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. 
For the first time in his life he had now passed hours of happiness 
in the society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her 
afterward without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him 
in his own esteem. 

Anxiously as he tried to hide it, the change produced in his look 
and manner by the new feeling awakened in him was not a change 
which could be concealed from Mrs. Lecount. On the second day 
she pointedly asked him whether he had not made an arrangement 
to call on the Bygraves. He denied it as before. u Perhaps you 
are going to-morrow, Mr. Noel?” persisted the housekeeper. He 
was at the end of his resources ; he was impatient to be rid of her 
inquiries ; he trusted to his friend at North Shingles to help him ; 
and this time he answered Yes. u If you see the young lady,” pro- 
ceeded Mrs. Lecount,^ don’t forget that note of mine, sir, which you 
have in your waistcoat-pocket.” No more was said on either side, 
but by that night’s post the housekeeper wrote to Miss Garth. 
The letter merely acknowledged, with thanks, the receipt of Missl 
Garth’s communication, and informed her that in a few days Mrs. 
Lecount hoped to be in a position to write again and summon Mr. 
Pendril to Aldborough. 


350 


NO NAME. 


Late in the evening, when the parlor at North Shingles began to 
get dark, and when the captain rang the bell for candles as usual, 
he was surprised by hearing Magdalen’s voice in the passage telling 
the servant to take the lights down stairs again. She knocked at 
the door immediately afterward, and glided into the obscurity of 
the room like a ghost. 

“ I have a question to ask you about your plans for to-morrow,” 
she said. “ My eyes are very weak this evening, and I hope you 
will not object to dispense with the candles for a few minutes.” 

She spoke in low, stifled tones, and felt her way noiselessly to a 
chair far removed from the captain in the darkest part of the room. 
Sitting near the window, he could just discern the dim outline of 
her dress, he could just hear the faint accents of her voice. For 
the last two days he had seen nothing of her except during their 
morning walk. On that afternoon he had found his wife crying in 
the little backroom down stairs. She could only tell him that Mag- 
dalen had frightened her — that Magdalen was going the way again 
which she had gone when the letter came from China in the terri- 
ble past time at Yauxhall Walk. 

“ I was sorry to hear that you were ill to-day, from Mrs. Wragge,” 
said the captain, unconsciously dropping his voice almost to a 
whisper as he spoke. 

“ It doesn’t matter,” she answered quietly, out of the darkness. 
“ I am strong enough to suffer, and live. Other girls in my place 
would have been happier — they would have suffered, and died. It 
doesn’t matter; it will be all the same a hundred years hence. Is 
he coming again to-morrow morning at seven o’clock ?” 

u He is coming, if you feel no objection to it.” 

“I have no objection to make; I have done with objecting. But 
I should like to have the time altered. I don’t look my best in the 
early morning — I have bad nights, and I rise haggard and worn. 
Write him a note this evening, and tell him to come at twelve 
o’clock.” 

“ Twelve is rather late, under the circumstances, for you to be 
seen out walking.” 

“I have no intention of walking. Let him be shown into the 
parlor — ” 

Her voice died away in silence before she ended the sentence. 

“ Yes ?” said Captain Wragge. „ 

M And leave me alone in the parlor to receive him.” 

“I understand,” said the captain. “An admirable idea. I’ll be 
out of the way in the dining-room while he is here, and you can 
come and tell me about it when he has gone.” 

There was another moment of silence. 

“ Is there no way but telling you ?” she asked, suddenly. “ I can 


NO NAME. 


351 


control myself while he is with me, but I can’t answer for what I 
may say or do afterward. Is there no other way ?” 

“ Plenty of ways,” said the captain. “ Here is the first that oc- 
curs to me. Leave the blind down over the window of your room 
up stairs before he comes. I will go out on the beach, and wait 
there within sight of the house. When I see him come out again, 
I will look at the window. If he has said nothing, leave the blind 
down. If he has made you an offer, draw the blind up. The sig- 
nal is simplicity itself; we can’t misunderstand each other. Look 
your best to-morrow ! Make sure of him, my dear girl — make sure 
of him, if you possibly can.” 

He had spoken loud enough to feel certain that she had heard 
him, but no answering word came from her. The dead silence 
was only disturbed by the rustling of her dress, which told him she 
had risen from her chair. Her shadowy presence crossed the room 
again ; the door shut softly ; she was gone. He rang the bell hur- 
riedly for the lights. The servant found him standing close at the 
window, looking less self-possessed than usual. He told her he felt 
a little poorly, and sent her to the cupboard for the brandy. 

At a few minutes before twelve the next day Captain Wragge 
withdrew to his post of observation, concealing himself behind a 
fishing-boat drawn up on the beach. Punctually as the hour struck, 
he saw Noel Vanstone approach North Shingles and open the gar- 
den gate. When the house door had closed on the visitor, Captain 
Wragge settled himself comfortably against the side of the boat and 
lit his cigar. 

He smoked for half an hour — for ten minutes over the half-hour, 
by his watch. He finished the cigar down to the last morsel of it 
that he could hold in his lips. Just as he had thrown away the 
end, the door opened again, and Noel Yanstone came out. 

The captain looked up instantly at Magdalen’s window. In the 
absorbing excitement of the moment, he counted the seconds. She 
might get from the parlor to her own room in less than a minute. 
He counted to thirty, and nothing happened. He counted to fifty, 
and nothing happened. He gave up counting, and left the boat 
impatiently, to return to the house. 

As he took his first step forward he saw the signal. 

The blind was drawn up. 

Cautiously ascending the eminence of the beach, Captain Wragge 
looked toward Sea-view Cottage before he showed himself on the 
Parade. Noel Yanstone had reached home again : he was just en- 
tering his own door. 

“ If all your money was offered me to stand in your shoes,” said 
the captain, looking after him — “rich as you are, I wouldn’t take 
it!” 


352 


NO NAME. 


CHAPTER Vin. 

On returning to the house, Captain Wragge received a significant 
message from the servant. “Mr. Noel Yanstone would call again 
at two o’clock that afternoon, when he hoped to have the pleasure 
of finding Mr. Bygrave at home.” 

The captain’s first inquiry after hearing this message referred to 
Magdalen. “ Where was Miss Bygrave ?” “ In her own room.” 

“ Where was Mrs. Bygrave ?” “ In the back parlor.” Captain 

Wragge turned his steps at once in the latter direction, and found 
his wife, for the sesond time, in tears. She had been sent out of 
Magdalen’s room for the whole day, and she was at her wits’ end to 
know what she had done to deserve it. Shortening her lamenta- 
tions without ceremony, her husband sent her up stairs on the spot, 
with instructions to knock at the door, and to inquire whether Mag- 
dalen could give five minutes’ attention to a question of importance 
which must be settled before two o’clock. 

The answer returned was in the negative. Magdalen requested 
that the subject on which she was asked to decide might be men- 
tioned to her in writing. She engaged to reply in the same way, 
on the understanding that Mrs. Wragge, and not the servant, should 
be employed to deliver the note, and to take back the answer. 

Captain Wragge forthwith opened his paper-case and wrote these 
lines: “Accept my warmest congratulations on the result of your 
interview with Mr. N. Y. He is coming again at two o’clock — no 
doubt to make his proposals in due form. The question to decide 
is, whether I shall press him or not on the subject of settlements. 
The considerations for your own mind are two in number. First, 
whether the said pressure (without at all underrating your influence 
over him) may not squeeze for a long time before it squeezes money 
out of Mr. N. Y. Secondly, whether we are altogether justified — 
considering our present position toward a certain sharp practitioner 
in petticoats — in running the risk of delay. Consider these points, 
and let me have your decision as soon as convenient.” 

The answer returned to this note was written in crooked, blotted 
characters, strangely unlike Magdalen’s usually firm and clear hand- 
writing. It only contained these words : “ Give yourself no trouble 
about settlements. Leave the use to which he is to put his money 
for the future in my hands.” 

“ Did you see her ?” asked the captain, when his wife had deliv 
ered the answer. 


NO NAME. 


353 


“ I tried,” said Mrs. Wragge, with a fresh burst of tears — ; ‘but 
she only opened the door far enough to put out her hand. I took 
and gave it a little squeeze — and, oh poor soul, it felt so cold in 
mine !” 

When Mrs. Lecount’s master made his appearance at two o’clock, 
he stood alarmingly in need of an anodyne application from Mrs. 
Lecount’s green fan. The agitation of making his avowal to Mag- 
dalen ; the terror of finding himself discovered by the housekeeper ; 
the tormenting suspicion of the hard pecuniary conditions which 
Magdalen’s relative and guardian might impose on him — all these 
emotions, stirring in conflict together, had overpowered his feebly- 
working heart with a trial that strained it sorely. He gasped for 
breath as he sat down in the parlor at North Shingles, and that 
ominous bluish pallor which always overspread his face in moments 
of agitation now made its warning appearance again. Captain 
Wragge seized the brandy bottle in genuine alarm, and forced his 
visitor to drink a wine-glassful of the spirit before a word was said 
between them on either side. 

Restored by the stimulant, and encouraged by the readiness with 
which the captain anticipated every thing that he had to say, Noel 
Yanstone contrived to state the serious object of his visit in tolerably 
plain terms. All the conventional preliminaries proper to the occa- 
sion were easily disposed of. The suitor’s family was respectable ; 
his position in life was undeniably satisfactory; his attachment, 
though hasty, was evidently disinterested and sincere. All that 
Captain Wragge had to do was to refer to these various considera- 
tions with a happy choice of language in a voice that trembled with 
manly emotion, and this he did to perfection. For the first half- 
hour of the interview, no allusion whatever was made to the delicate 
and dangerous part of the subject. The captain waited until he 
had composed his visitor, and when that result was achieved came 
smoothly to the point in these terms : 

“ There is one little difficulty, Mr. Yanstone, which I think we have 
both overlooked. Your housekeeper’s recent conduct inclines me to 
fear that she will view the approaching change in your life with any 
thing but a friendly eye. Probably you have not thought it neces- 
sary yet to inform her of the new tie which you propose to form ?” 

Noel Yanstone turned pale at the bare idea of explaining himself 
to Mrs. Lecount. 

“ I can’t tell what I’m to do,” he said, glancing aside nervously at 
the window, as if he expected to see the housekeeper peeping in. “ I 
hate all awkward positions, and this is the most unpleasant position 
I ever was placed in. You don’t know what a terrible woman Le- 
count is. I’m not afraid of her ; pray don’t suppose I’m afraid of 
her — ” 


354 


NO NAME. 


At those words his fears rose in his throat, and gave him the lie 
direct by stopping his utterance. 

“ Pray don’t trouble yourself to explain,” said Captain Wragge, 
coming to the rescue. “ This is the common story, Mr. Yanstone. 
Here is a woman who has grown old in your service, and in your fa- 
ther’s service before you ; a woman who has contrived, in all sorts 
of small underhand ways, to presume systematically on her position 
for years and years past ; a woman, in short, whom your inconsider' 
ate but perfectly natural kindness has allowed to claim a right of 
property in you — ” 

‘‘Property!” cried Noel Yanstone, mistaking the captain, and let- 
ting the truth escape him through sheer inability to conceal his fears 
any longer. “I don’t know what amount of property she won’t 
claim. She’ll make me pay for my father as well as for myself. 
Thousands, Mr. Bygrave — thousands of pounds sterling out of my 
pocket ! ! !” He clasped his hands in despair at the picture of pe- 
cuniary compulsion which his fancy had conjured up — his own gold- 
en life-blood spouting from him in great jets of prodigality, under 
the lancet of Mrs. Lecount. 

“Gently, Mr. Yanstone — gently! The woman knows nothing so 
far, and the money is not gone yet.” 

“ No, no ; the money is not gone, as you say. I’m only nervous 
about it ; I can’t help being nervous. You were saying something 
just now ; you were going to give me advice. I value your advice ; 
you don’t know how highly I value your advice.” He said those 
words with a conciliatory smile which was more than helpless : it 
was absolutely servile, in its dependence on his judicious friend. 

“ I was only assuring you, my dear sir, that I understood your po- 
sition,” said the captain. “ I see your difficulty as plainly as you 
can see it yourself. Tell a woman like Mrs. Lecount that she must 
come off her domestic throne, to make way for a young and beauti- 
ful successor, armed with the authority of a wife, and an unpleasant 
scene must be the inevitable result. An unpleasant scene, Mr. Yan- 
stone, if your opinion of your housekeeper’s sanity is well founded. 
Something far more serious, if my opinion that her intellect is un- 
settled happens to turn out the right one.” 

“ I don’t say it isn’t my opinion too,” rejoined Noel Yanstone. 
“ Especially after what has happened to-day.” 

Captain Wragge immediately begged to know what the event al- 
luded to might be. 

Noel Yanstone thereupon explained — with an infinite number of 
parentheses all referring to himself — that Mrs. Lecount had put the 
dreaded question relating to the little note in her master’s pocket 
barely an hour since. He had answered her inquiry as Mr. Bygrave 
had advised him. On hearing that the accuracy of the personal de j 


NO NAME. 


355 


scription had been fairly put to the test, and had failed in the one 
important particular of the moles on the neck, Mrs. Lecount had con- 
sidered a little, and had then asked him whether he had shown her 
note to Mr. Bygrave before the experiment was tried. He had an- 
swered in the negative, as the only safe form of reply that he could 
think of on the spur of the moment, and the housekeeper had then 
addressed him in these strange and startling words : “ You are keep- 
ing the truth from me, Mr. Noel. You are trusting strangers, and 
doubting your old servant and your old friend. Every time you go 
to Mr. Bygrave’s house, every time you see Miss Bygrave, you are 
drawing nearer and nearer to your destruction. They have got the 
bandage over your eyes in spite of me ; but I tell them, and tell you, 
before many days are over I will take it off!” To this extraordi- 
nary outbreak — accompanied as it was by an expression in Mrs. Le- 
count’s face which he had never seen there before — Noel Yanstone 
had made no reply. Mr. Bygrave’s conviction that there was a lurk- 
ing taint of insanity in the housekeeper’s blood had recurred to his 
memory, and he had left the room at the first opportunity. 

Captain Wragge listened with the closest attention to the narra- 
tive thus presented to him. But one conclusion could be drawn 
from it — it was a plain warning to him to hasten the end. 

“ I am not surprised,” he said, gravely, “ to hear that you are in- 
clining more favorably to my opinion. After what you have just 
told me, Mr. Yanstone, no sensible man could do otherwise. This is 
becoming serious. I hardly know what results may not be expected 
to follow the communication of your approaching change in life to 
Mrs. Lecount. My niece may be involved in those results. She is 
nervous ; she is sensitive in the highest degree ; she is the innocent 
object of this woman’s unreasoning hatred and distrust. You alarm 
me, sir ! I am not easily thrown off my balance, but I acknowledge 
you alarm me for the future.” He frowned, shook his head, and 
looked at his visitor despondently. 

Noel Yanstone began to feel uneasy. The change in Mr. By- 
grave’s manner seemed ominous of a reconsideration of his proposals 
from a new and unfavorable point of view. He took counsel of his 
inborn cowardice and his inborn cunning, and proposed a solution 
of the difficulty discovered by himself. 

“ Why should we tell Lecount at all ?” he asked. “ What right 
has Lecount to know ? Can’t we be married without letting her 
into the secret ? And can’t somebody tell her afterward when we 
are both out of her reach ?” 

Captain Wragge received this proposal with an expression of 
surprise which did infinite credit to his power of control over his 
own countenance. His foremost object throughout the interview 
had been to conduct it to this point, or, in other words, to make 


356 


NO NAME. 


the first idea of keeping the marriage a secret from Mrs. Lecount 
emanate from Noel Vanstone instead of from himself. No one knew 
better than the captain that the only responsibilities which a weak 
man ever accepts are responsibilities which can be perpetually 
pointed out to him as resting exclusively on his own shoulders. 

“ I am accustomed to set my face against clandestine proceedings 
of all kinds,” said Captain Wragge. “But there are exceptions to 
the strictest rules; and I am bound to admit, Mr. Yanstone, that 
your position in this matter is an exceptional position, if ever there 
was one yet. The course you have just proposed — however unbe* 
coming I may think it, however distasteful it may be to myself— 
would not only spare you a very serious embarrassment (to say the 
least of it), but would also protect you from the personal assertion 
of those pecuniary claims on the part of your housekeeper to which 
you have already adverted. These are both desirable results to 
achieve — to say nothing of the removal, on my side, of all appre- 
hension of annoyance to my niece. On the other hand, however, a 
marriage solemnized with such privacy as you propose must be a 
hasty marriage; for, as we are situated, the longer the delay, the 
greater will be the risk that our secret may escape our keeping. I 
am not against hasty marriages where a mutual flame is fanned by an 
adequate income. My own was a love-match contracted in a hurry. 
There are plenty of instances in the experience of every one, of short 
courtships and speedy marriages, which have turned up trumps — I 
beg your pardon — which have turned out well after all. But if you 
and my niece, Mr. Yanstone, are to add one to the number of these 
cases, the usual preliminaries of marriage among the higher classes 
must be hastened by some means. You doubtless understand me 
as now referring to the subject of settlements.” 

“I’ll take another tea-spoonful of brandy,” said Noel Yanstone, 
holding out his glass with a trembling hand as the word “ settle- 
ments ” passed Captain Wragge’s lips. 

“ I’ll take a tea-spoonful with you,” said the captain, nimbly dis- 
mounting from the pedestal of his respectability, and sipping his 
brandy with the highest relish. Noel Yanstone, after nervously fol- 
lowing his host’s example, composed himself to meet the coming 
ordeal, with reclining head and grasping hands, in the position 
familiarly associated to all civilized humanity with a seat in a 
dentist’s chair. 

The captain put down his empty glass and got up again on his 
pedestal. 

“ We were talking of settlements,” he resumed. “ I have already 
mentioned, Mr. Yanstone, at an early period of our conversation, that 
my niece presents the man of her choice with no other dowry than 
the most inestimable of all gifts — the gift of herself. This circum- 


NO NAME. 


357 


stance, however (as you are no doubt aware), does not disentitle me 
to make the customary stipulations with her future husband. Ac- 
cording to the usual course in this matter, my lawyer would see 
yours — consultations would take place — delays would occur — 
strangers would be in possession of your intentions — and Mrs. Le- 
count would, sooner or later, arrive at that knowledge of the truth 
which you are anxious to keep from her. Do you agree with me 
so far ?” v 

Unutterable apprehension closed Noel Yanstone’s lips. He could 
only reply by an inclination of the head. 

“Very good,” said the captain. “Now, sir, you may possibly 
have observed that I am a man of a very original turn of mind. If 
I have not hitherto struck you in that light, it may then be neces- 
sary to mention that there are some subjects on which I persist in 
thinking for myself. The subject of marriage settlements is one of 
them. What, let me ask you, does a parent or guardian in my 
present condition usually do ? After having trusted the man whom 
he has chosen for his son-in-law with the sacred deposit of a wom- 
an’s happiness, he turns round on that man, and declines to trust 
him with the infinitely inferior responsibility of providing for her 
pecuniary future. He fetters his son-in-law with the most binding 
document the law can produce, and employs with the husband of 
his own child the same precautions which he would use if he were 
dealing with a stranger and a rogue. I call such conduct as this in- 
consistent and unbecoming in the last degree. You will not find it 
my course of conduct, Mr. Yanstone — you will not find me preach- 
ing what I don’t practice. If I trust you with my niece, I trust you 
with every inferior responsibility toward her and toward me. Give 
me your hand, sir ; tell me, on your word of honor, that you will pro- 
vide for your wife as becomes her position and your means, and the 
question of settlements is decided between us from this moment at 
once and forever !” Having carried out Magdalen’s instructions in 
this lofty tone, he threw open his respectable frock-coat, and sat 
with head erect and hand extended, the model of parental feeling, 
and the picture of human integrity. 

For one moment Noel Yanstone remained literally petrified by 
astonishment. The next, he started from his chair and wrung the 
hand of his magnanimous friend in a perfect transport of admira- 
tion. Never yet, throughout his long and varied career, had Cap- 
tain Wragge felt such difficulty in keeping his countenance as he 
felt now. Contempt for the outburst of miserly gratitude of which 
he was the object ; triumph in the sense of successful conspiracy 
against a man who had rated the offer of his protection at five 
pounds ; regret at the lost opportunity of effecting a fine stroke of 
moral agriculture, which his dread of involving himself in coming 


358 


NO NAME. 


consequences had forced him to let slip — all these varied emotions 
agitated the captain’s mind ; all strove together to find their way to 
the surface through the outlets of his face or his tongue. He allow- 
ed Noel Yanstone to keep possession of his hand, and to heap one 
series of shrill protestations and promises on another, until he had 
regained his usual mastery over himself. That result achieved, he 
put the little man back in his chair, and returned forthwith to the 
subject of Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Suppose we now revert to the difficulty which we have not con- 
quered yet,” said the captain. “ Let us say that I do violence to 
my own habits and feelings ; that I allow the considerations I have 
already mentioned to weigh with me ; and that I sanction your wish 
to be united to my niece without the knowledge of Mrs. Lecount. 
Allow me to inquire in that case what means you can suggest for 
the accomplishment of your end ?” 

“ I can’t suggest any thing,” replied Noel Yanstone, helplessly. 
“ Would you object to suggest for me ?” 

“ You are making a bolder request than you think, Mr. Yanstone. 
I never do things by halves. When I am acting with my customa 
ry candor, I am frank (as you know already) to the utmost verge of 
imprudence. When exceptional circumstances compel me to take 
an opposite course, there isn’t a slyer fox alive than I am. If, at 
your express request, I take off my honest English coat here and 
put on a Jesuit’s gown — if, purely out of sympathy for your awk- 
ward position, I consent to keep your secret for you from Mrs. Le- 
count — I must have no unseasonable scruples to contend with on 
your part. If it is neck or nothing on my side, sir, it must be neck 
or nothing on yours also !” 

“ Neck or nothing by all means,” said Noel Yanstone, briskly — ■ 
“ on the understanding that you go first. I have no scruples about 
keeping Lecount in the dark. But she is devilish cunning, Mr. By- 
grave. How is it to be done ?” 

“ You shall hear directly,” replied the captain. “ Before I de- 
velop my views, I should like to have your opinion on an abstract 
question of morality. What do you think, my dear sir, of pious 
frauds in general ?” 

Noel Yanstone looked a little embarrassed by the question. 

“ Shall I put it more plainly ?” continued Captain Wragge. 
“ What do you say to the universally - accepted maxim, that ‘ all 
stratagems are fair in love and war V — Yes or No ?” 

“ Yes !” answered Noel Yanstone, with the utmost readiness. 

w One more question, and I have done,” said the captain. “ Do 
you see any particular objection to practicing a pious fraud on Mrs, 
Lecount ?” 

Noel Yanstone’s resolution began to falter a little. 


NO NAME. 


359 


“ Is Lecount likely to find it out ?” he asked, cautiously. 

“ She can’t possibly discover it until you are married and out of 
her reach.” 

“ You are sure of that?” 

a Quite sure.” 

“ Play any trick you like on Lecount,” said Noel Vanstone, with 
an air of unutterable relief. “ I have had my suspicions lately that 
she is trying to domineer over me; I am beginning to feel that I 
have borne with Lecount long enough. I wish I was well rid of 
her.” 

“You shall have your wish,” said Captain Wragge. “You shall 
be rid of her in a week or ten days.” 

Noel Vanstone rose eagerly and approached the captain’s chair. 

“You don’t say so !” he exclaimed. “How do you mean to send 
her away ?” 

“I mean to send her on a journey,” replied Captain Wragge. 

“ Where ?” 

“ From your house at Aldborough to her brother’s bedside at 
Zurich.” 

Noel Vanstone started back at the answer, and returned suddenly 
to his chair. 

“ How can you do that ?” he inquired, in the greatest perplexity. 
“ Her brother (hang him !) is much better. She had another letter 
from Zurich to say so, this morning.” 

“ Did you see the letter ?” 

“Yes. She always worries about her brother — she would show it 
to me.” 

“ Who was it from ? and what did it say ?” 

“ It was from the doctor — he always writes to her. I don’t care 
two straws about her brother, and I don’t remember much of the 
letter, except that it was a short one. The fellow was much better ; 
and if the doctor didn’t write again, she might take it for granted 
that he was getting well. That was the substance of it.” 

“ Did you notice where she put the letter when you gave it her 
back again ?” 

“ Yes. She put it in the drawer where she keeps her account- 
books.” 

“ Can you get at that drawer ?” 

“ Of course I can. I have got a duplicate key — I always insist on 
a duplicate key of the place where she keeps her account-books. I 
never allow the account-books to be locked up from my inspection : 
it’s a rule of the house.” 

“ Be so good as to get that letter to-day, Mr. Vanstone, without 
your housekeeper’s knowledge, and add to the favor by letting me 
have it here privately for an hour or two,” 


360 


NO NAME. 


“ What do yon want it for ?” 

“ I have some more questions to ask before I can tell you. Have 
you any intimate friend at Zurich whom you could trust to help you 
in playing a trick on Mrs. Lecount ?” 

“ What sort of help do you mean ?” asked Noel Vanstone. 

“ Suppose,” said the captain, “ you were to send a letter addressed 
to Mrs. Lecount at Aldborough, inclosed in another letter addressed 
tp one of your friends abroad ? And suppose you were to instruct 
that friend to help a harmless practical joke by posting Mrs. Le- 
count’s letter at Zurich ? Do you know any one who could be 
trusted to do that ?” 

“I know two people who could be trusted !” cried Noel Vanstone. 
“Both ladies — both spinsters — both bitter enemies of Lecount’s. 
But what is your drift, Mr. Bygrave ? Though I am not usually 
wanting in penetration, I don’t altogether see your drift.” 

“You shall see it directly, Mr. Vanstone.” 

With those words he rose, withdrew T to his desk in the corner of 
the room, and wrote a few lines on a sheet of note-paper. After first 
reading them carefully to himself, he beckoned to Noel Vanstone to 
come and read them too. 

“A few minutes since,” said the captain, pointing complacently 
to his own composition with the feather end of his pen, “ I had the 
honor of suggesting a pious fraud on Mrs. Lecount. There it is !” 

He resigned his chair at the writing-table to his visitor. Noel 
Vanstone sat down, and read these lines : 

“ My dear Madam, — Since I last wrote, I deeply regret to inform 
you that your brother has suffered a relapse. The symptoms are so 
serious, that it is my painful duty to summon you instantly to his 
bedside. I am making every effort to resist the renewed progress 
of the malady, and I have not yet lost all hope of success. But I 
can not reconcile it to my conscience to leave you in ignorance of a 
serious change in my patient for the worst, which may be attended 
by fatal results. With much sympathy, I remain, etc., etc.” 

Captain Wragge waited with some anxiety for the effect which 
this letter might produce. Mean, selfish, and cowardly as he was, 
even Noel Vanstone might feel some compunction at practicing such 
a deception as was here suggested on a woman who stood toward 
him in the position of Mrs. Lecount. She had served him faithfully, 
however interested her motives might be — she had lived since he 
was a lad in the full possession of his father’s confidence — she was 
living now under the protection of his own roof. Could he fail to 
remember this ; and, remembering it, could he lend his aid without 
hesitation to the scheme which was now proposed to him ? Captain 


NO NAME. 


361 


Wragge unconsciously retained belief enough in human nature to 
doubt it. To his surprise, and, it must be added, to his relief also, 
his apprehensions proved to be perfectly groundless. The only emo- 
tions aroused in Noel Yanstone’s mind by a perusal of the letter were 
a hearty admiration of his friend’s idea, and a vainglorious anxiety 
to claim the credit to himself of being the person who carried it out. 
Examples may be found every day of a fool who is no coward ; ex- 
amples may be found occasionally of a fool who is not cunning ; but 
it may reasonably be doubted whether there is a producible instance 
anywhere of a fool who is not cruel. 

“Perfect!” cried Noel Yanstone, clapping his hands. “Mr. By- 
grave, you are as good as Figaro in the French comedy. Talking 
of French, there is one serious mistake in this clever letter of yours 
— it is written in the wrong language. When the doctor writes to 
Lecount, he writes in French. Perhaps you meant me to translate 
it ? You can’t manage without my help, can you ? I write French 
as fluently as I write English. Just look at me! I’ll translate it, 
while I sit here, in two strokes of the pen.” 

He completed the translation almost as rapidly as Captain Wragge 
had produced the original. “ Wait a minute !” he cried, in high crit- 
ical triumph at discovering another defect in the composition of his 
ingenious friend. “ The doctor always dates his letters. Here is no 
date to yours.” 

“ I leave the date to you,” said the captain, with a sardonic smile. 
“ You have discovered the fault, my dear sir — pray correct it !” 

Noel Vanstone mentally looked into the great gulf which separates 
the faculty that can discover a defect, from the faculty that can ap- 
ply a remedy, and, following the example of many a wiser man, de- 
clined to cross over it. 

“ I couldn’t think of taking the liberty,” he said, politely. “ Per* 
haps you had a motive for leaving the date out ?” 

“ Perhaps I had,” replied Captain Wragge, with his easiest good- 
humor. “ The date must depend on the time a letter takes to get 
to Zurich, /have had no experience on that point — you must have 
had plenty of experience in your father’s time. Give me the benefit 
of your information, and we will add the date before you leave the 
writing-table.” 

Noel Yanstone’s experience was, as Captain Wragge had antici- 
pated, perfectly competent to settle the question of time. The rail- 
way resources of the Continent (in the year eighteen hundred and 
forty-seven) were but scanty ; and a letter sent at that period from 
England to Zurich, and from Zurich back again to England, occupied 
ten days in making the double journey by post. 

“ Date the letter in French five days on from to-morrow,” said the 
captain, when he had got his information. “ Yery good. The next 


362 


NO NAME. 


thing is to let me have the doctor’s note as soon as you can. I may 
be obliged to practice some hours before I can copy your translation 
in an exact imitation of the doctor’s handwriting. Have you got 
any foreign note-paper ? Let me have a few sheets, and send, at the 
same time, an envelope addressed to one of those lady-friends of 
yours at Zurich, accompanied by the necessary request to post the 
inclosure. This is all I need trouble you to do, Mr. Yanstone. Don’t 
let me seem inhospitable ; but the sooner you can supply me with 
my materials, the better I shall be pleased. We entirely understand 
each other, I suppose ? Having accepted your proposal for my niece’s 
hand, I sanction a private marriage in consideration of the circum- 
stances on your side. A little harmless stratagem is necessary to 
forward your views. I invent the stratagem at your request, and you 
make use of it without the least hesitation. The result is, that in 
ten days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be on her way to Switz- 
erland ; in fifteen days from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will reach Zu- 
rich, and discover the trick we have played her ; in twenty days 
from to-morrow Mrs. Lecount will be back at Aldborough, and will 
find her master’s wedding-cards on the table, and her master him- 
self away on his honey-moon trip. I put it arithmetically, for the 
sake of putting it plain. God bless you. Good-morning !” 

“ I suppose I may have the happiness of seeing Miss By grave to- 
morrow ?” said Noel Yanstone, turning round at the door. 

“ We must be careful,” replied Captain Wragge. “ I don’t forbid 
to-morrow, but I make no promise beyond that. Permit me to re- 
mind you that we have got Mrs. Lecount to manage for the next 
ten days.” 

“ I wish Lecount was at the bottom of the German Ocean !” ex- 
claimed Noel Yanstone, fervently. “ It’s all very well for you to 
manage her — you don’t live in the house. What am I to do ?” 

“ I’ll tell you to-morrow,” said the captain. “ Go out for your 
walk alone, and drop in here, as you dropped in to-day, at two 
o’clock. In the mean time, don’t forget those things I want you to 
send me. Seal them up together in a large envelope. When you 
have done that, ask Mrs. Lecount to walk out with you as usual; 
and while she is up stairs putting her bonnet on, send the servant 
across to me. You understand ? Good-morning.” 

An hour afterward, the sealed envelope, with its inclosures, reach- 
ed Captain Wragge in perfect safety. The double task of exactly 
imitating a strange handwriting, and accurately copying w r ords 
written in a language with which he was but slightly acquainted, 
presented more difficulties to be overcome than the captain had 
anticipated. It was eleven o’clock before the employment which 
he had undertaken was successfully completed, and the letter to 
Zurich ready for the post. 


NO NAME. 


363 


Before going to bed, he walked out on the deserted Parade to 
breathe the cool night air. All the lights were extinguished in 
Sea-view Cottage, when he looked that way, except the light in the 
housekeeper’s window. Captain Wragge shook his head suspi- 
ciously. He had gained experience enough by this time to distrust 
the wakefulness of Mrs. Lecount. 


CHAPTER IX. 

If Captain Wragge could have looked into Mrs. Lecount’s room 
while he stood on the Parade watching the light in her window, 
he would have seen the housekeeper sitting absorbed in meditation 
over a worthless little morsel of brown stuff which lay on her toilet- 
table. 

However exasperating to herself the conclusion might be, Mrs. 
Lecount could not fail to see that she had been thus far met and 
baffled successfully at every point. What was she to do next ? If 
she sent for Mr. Pendril when he came to Aldborough (with only a 
few hours spared from his business at her disposal), what definite 
course would there be for him to follow ? If she showed Noel Van- 
stone the original letter from which her note had been copied, he 
would apply instantly to the writer for an explanation ; would ex- 
pose the fabricated story by which Mrs. Lecount had succeeded in 
imposing on Miss Garth ; and would, in any event, still declare, on 
the evidence of his own eyes, that the test by the marks on the neck 
had utterly failed. Miss Vanstone, the elder, whose unexpected 
presence at Aldborough might have done wonders — whose voice 
in the hall at North Shingles, even if she had been admitted no 
further, might have reached her sister’s ears, and led to instant re- 
sults — Miss Vanstone, the elder, was out of the country, and was 
not likely to return for a month at least. Look as anxiously as Mrs. 
Lecount might along the course which she had hitherto followed, 
she failed to see her way through the accumulated obstacles which 
now barred her advance. 

Other women in this position might have waited until circum- 
stances altered, and helped them. Mrs. Lecount boldly retraced 
her steps, and determined to find her way to her end in a new di- 
rection. Resigning for the present all further attempt to prove that 
the false Miss BygraVe was the true Magdalen Vanstone, she re- 
solved to narrow the range of her next efforts ; to leave the actual 
question of Magdalen’s identity untouched; and to rest satisfied 
with convincing her master of this simple fact — that the young 
lady who was charming him at North Shingles, and the disguised 


364 


NO NAME. 


woman who had terrified him in Vauxhall Walk, were one and the 
same person. 

The means of effecting this new object were, to all appearance, 
far less easy of attainment than the means of effecting the object 
which Mrs. Lecount had just resigned. Here no help was to be 
expected from others, no ostensibly benevolent motives could be 
put forward as a blind — no appeal could be made to Mr. Pendril 
or to Miss Garth. Here the housekeeper’s only chance of success 
depended, in the first place, on her being able to effect a stolen en- 
trance into Mr. Bygrave’s house, and, in the second place, on her 
ability to discover whether that memorable alpaca dress from which 
she had secretly cut the fragment of stuff happened to form part of 
Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe. 

Taking the difficulties now before her in their order as they oc- 
curred, Mrs. Lecount first resolved to devote the next few days to 
watching the habits of the inmates of North Shingles, from early in 
the morning to late at night, and to testing the capacity of the one 
servant in the house to resist the temptation of a bribe. Assuming 
that results proved successful, and that, either by money or by strat- 
agem, she gained admission to North Shingles (without the knowl- 
edge of Mr. By grave or his niece), she turned next to the second 
difficulty of the two — the difficulty of obtaining access to Miss By- 
grave’s wardrobe. 

If the servant proved corruptible, all obstacles in this direction 
might be considered as removed beforehand. But if the servant 
proved honest, the new problem was no easy one to solve. 

Long and careful consideration of the question led the house- 
keeper at last to the bold resolution of obtaining an interview — if 
the servant failed her — with Mrs. Bygrave herself. What was the 
true cause of this lady’s mysterious seclusion ? Was she a person 
of the strictest and the most inconvenient integrity ? or a person 
who could not be depended on to preserve a secret ? or a person 
who was as artful as Mr. Bygrave himself, and who was kept in re- 
serve to forward the object of some new deception which was yet 
to come? In the first two cases, Mrs. Lecount could trust in her 
own powers of dissimulation, and in the results which they might 
achieve. In the last case (if no other end was gained), it might be 
of vital importance to her to discover an enemy hidden in the dark. 
In any event, she determined to run the risk. Of the three chances 
in her favor on which she had reckoned at the outset of the strug- 
gle — the chance of entrapping Magdalen by word of mouth, the 
chance of entrapping her by the help of her friends, and the chance 
of entrapping her by means of Mrs. Bygrave — two had been tried, 
and two had failed. The third remained to be tested yet ; and the 
third might succeed. 













































































I 

































































“do you hear, you villain?” 


NO NAME. 


367 


So, the captain’s enemy plotted against him in the privacy of her 
own chamber, while the captain watched the light in her window 
from the beach outside. 

Before breakfast the next morning, Captain Wragge posted the 
forged letter to Zurich with his own hand. He went back to North 
Shingles with his mind not quite decided on the course to take 
with Mrs. Lecount during the all-important interval of the next ten 
days. 

Greatly to his surprise, his doubts on this point were abruptly 
decided by Magdalen herself. 

He found her waiting for him in the room where the breakfast 
was laid. She was walking restlessly to and fro, with her head 
drooping on her bosom, and her hair hanging disordered over her 
shoulders. The moment she looked up on his entrance, the captain 
felt the fear which Mrs. Wragge had felt before him — the fear that 
her mind would be struck prostrate again, as it had been struck 
once already, when Frank’s letter reached her in Vauxhall Walk. 

“ Is he coming again to-day ?” she asked, pushing away from her 
the chair which Captain Wragge offered, with such violence that 
she threw it on the floor. 

“ Yes,” said the captain, wisely answering her in the fewest words. 
“ He is coming at two o’clock.” 

“ Take me away !” she exclaimed, tossing her hair back wildly 
from her face. “ Take me away before he comes. I can’t get over 
the horror of marrying him while I am in this hateful place ; take 
me somewhere where I can forget it, or I shall go mad ! Give me 
two days’ rest — two days out of sight of that horrible sea — two 
days out of prison in this horrible house — two days anywhere in 
the wide world away from Aldborough. I’ll come back with you ! 
I’ll go through with it to the end ! Only give me two days’ escape 
from that man and every thing belonging to him ! Do you hear, 
you villain ?” she cried, seizing his arm and shaking it in a frenzy 
of passion ; “ I have been tortured enough — I can bear it no longer!” 

There was but one way of quieting her, and the captain instantly 
took it. 

“ If you will try to control yourself,” he said, “ you shall leave 
Aldborough in an hour’s time.” 

She dropped his arm, and leaned back heavily against the wall 
behind her. 

“I’ll try,” she answered, struggling for breath, but looking at 
him less wildly. “You sha’n’t complain of me, if I can help it.” 
She attempted confusedly to take her handkerchief from her apron 
pocket, and failed to find it. The captain took it out for her. Her 
eyes softened, and she drew her breath more freely as she received 


368 


NO NAME. 


the handkerchief from him. “You are a kinder man than I thought 
you were,” she said ; “ I am sorry I spoke so passionately to you just 
now — I am very, very sorry.” The tears stole into her eyes, and she 
offered him her hand with the native grace and gentleness of hap- 
pier days. “ Be friends with me again,” she said, pleadingly. “ I’m 
only a girl, Captain Wragge — I’m only a girl !” 

He took her hand in silence, patted it for a moment, and then 
opened the door for her to go back to her own room again. There 
was genuine regrei in his face as he showed her that trifling atten- 
tion. He was a vagabond and a cheat ; he had lived a mean, shuf- 
fling, degraded life, but he was human; and she had found her 
way to the lost sympathies in him which not even the self-profana- 
tion of a swindler’s existence could wholly destroy. “Damn the 
breakfast !” he said, when the servant came in for her orders. “ Go 
to the inn directly, and say I want a carriage and pair at the door 
in an hour’s time.” He went out into the passage, still chafing 
under a sense of mental disturbance which was new to him, and 
shouted to his wife more fiercely than ever — “Pack up what we 
want for a week’s absence, and be ready in half an hour !” Having 
issued those directions, he returned to the breakfast-room, and look- 
ed at the half-spread table w T ith an impatient wonder at his disin- 
clination to do justice to his own meal. “ She has rubbed off the 
edge of my appetite,” he said to himself, with a forced laugh. “ I’ll 
try a cigar, and a turn in the fresh air.” 

If he had been twenty years younger, those remedies might have 
failed him. But where is the man to be found whose internal policy 
succumbs to revolution when that man is on the wrong side of fifty ? 
Exercise and change of place gave the captain back into the posses- 
sion of himself. He recovered the lost sense of the flavor of his ci- 
gar, and recalled his wandering attention to the question of his ap- 
proaching absence from Aldborough. A few minutes’ consideration 
satisfied his mind that Magdalen’s outbreak had forced him to take 
the course of all others which, on a fair review of existing emergen- 
cies, it was now most desirable to adopt. 

Captain Wragge’s inquiries on the evening when he and Magda- 
len had drunk tea at Sea View had certainly informed him that the 
housekeeper’s brother possessed a modest competence ; that his sis- 
ter was his nearest living relative; and that there were some un- 
scrupulous cousins on the spot who were anxious to usurp the place 
in his will which properly belonged to Mrs. Lecount. Here were 
strong motives to take the housekeeper to Zurich when the false re- 
port of her brother’s relapse reached England. But if any idea of 
Noel Yanstone’s true position dawned on her in the mean time, who 
could say whether she might not, at the eleventh hour, prefer as- 
serting her large pecuniary interest in her master, to defending her 


NO NAME. 


369 


small pecuniary interest at her brother’s bedside ? While that 
question remained undecided, the plain necessity of checking the 
growth of Noel Vanstone’s intimacy with the family at North 
Shingles did not admit of a doubt; and of all means of effecting 
that object, none could be less open to suspicion than the tempo- 
rary removal of the household from their residence at Aldborough. 
Thoroughly satisfied with the soundness of this conclusion, Captain 
Wragge made straight for Sea- view Cottage, to apologize and ex- 
plain before the carriage came and the departure took place. 

Noel Vanstone was easily accessible to visitors : he was walking 
in the garden before breakfast. His disappointment and vexation 
were freely expressed when he heard the news which his friend had 
to communicate. The captain’s fluent tongue, however, soon im- 
pressed on him the necessity of resignation to present circumstances. 
The bare hint that the “ pious fraud ” might fail after all, if any 
thing happened in the ten days’ interval to enlighten Mrs. Lecount, 
had an instant effect in making Noel Vanstone as patient and as 
submissive as could be wished. 

“ I won’t tell you where we are going, for two good reasons,” said 
Captain Wragge, when his preliminary explanations were com- 
pleted. “ In the first place, I haven’t made up my mind yet ; and, 
in the second place, if you don’t know where our destination is, Mrs. 
Lecount can’t worm it out of you. I have not the least doubt she 
is watching us at this moment from behind her window-curtain. 
When she asks what I wanted with you this morning, tell her I 
came to say good-bye for a few days, finding my niece not so well 
again, and wishing to take her on a short visit to some friends to 
try change of air. If you could produce an impression on Mrs. Le- 
count’s mind (without overdoing it), that you are a little disappoint- 
ed in me, and that you are rather inclined to doubt my heartiness in 
cultivating your acquaintance, you will greatly help our present ob- 
ject. You may depend on our return to North Shingles in four or 
five days at furthest. If any thing strikes me in the mean while, 
the post is always at our service, and I won’t fail to write to you.” 

“ Won’t Miss Bygrave write to me ?” inquired Noel Vanstone, pit- 
eously. “ Did she know you were coming here ? Did she send me 
no message ?” 

“ Unpardonable on my part to have forgotten it !” cried the cap- 
tain. “ She sent you her love.” 

Noel Vanstone closed his eyes in silent ecstasy. 

When he opened them again Captain Wragge had passed through 
the garden gate and was on his way back to North Shingles. As 
soon as his own door had closed on him, Mrs. Lecount descended 
from the post of observation which the captain had rightly suspect- 
ed her of occupying, and addressed the inquiry to her master which 


370 


NO NAME. 


the captain had rightly foreseen would follow his departure. The 
reply she received produced but one impression on her mind. She 
at once set it down as a falsehood, and returned to her own window 
to keep watch over North Shingles more vigilantly than ever. 

To her utter astonishment, after a lapse of less than half an hour 
she saw an empty carriage draw up at Mr. Bygrave’s door. Lug- 
gage was brought out and packed on the vehicle. Miss Bygrave 
appeared, and took her seat in it. She was followed into the car- 
riage by a lady of great size and stature, whom the housekeeper 
conjectured to be Mrs. Bygrave. The servant came next, and stood 
waiting on the path. The last person to appear was Mr. Bygrave. 
He locked the house door, and took the key away with him to a 
cottage near at hand, which was the residence of the landlord of 
North Shingles. On his return, he nodded to the servant, who 
walked away by herself toward the humbler quarter of the little 
town, and joined the ladies in the carriage. The coachman mount- 
ed the box, and the vehicle disappeared. 

Mrs. Lecount laid down the opera-glass, through which she had 
been closely investigating these proceedings, with a feeling of help- 
less perplexity which she was almost ashamed to acknowledge to 
herself. The secret of Mr. Bygrave’s object in suddenly emptying 
his house at Aldborough of every living creature in it was an im- 
penetrable mystery to her. 

Submitting herself to circumstances with a ready resignation 
which Captain Wragge had not shown, on his side, in a similar situ- 
ation, Mrs. Lecount wasted neither time nor temper in unprofitable 
guess-work. She left the mystery to thicken or to clear, as the fu- 
ture might decide, and looked exclusively at the uses to which she 
might put the morning’s event in her own interests. Whatever 
might have become of the family at North Shingles, the servant was 
left behind, and the servant was exactly the person whose assistance 
might now be of vital importance to the housekeeper’s projects. 
Mrs. Lecount put on her bonnet, inspected the collection of loose sil- 
ver in her purse, and set forth on the spot to make the servant’s ac- 
quaintance. 

She went first to the cottage at which Mr. Bygrave had left the 
key at North Shingles, to discover the servant’s present address 
from the landlord. So far as this object was concerned, her errand 
proved successful. The landlord knew that the girl had been al- 
lowed to go home for a few days to her friends, and knew in what 
part of Aldborough her friends lived. But here his sources of in- 
formation suddenly dried up. He knew nothing of the destination 
to which Mr. Bygrave and his family had betaken themselves, and 
he was perfectly ignorant of the number of days over which their 
absence might be expected to extend. All he could say was, that 


NO NAME. 


371 


he had not received a notice to quit from his tenant, and that he 
had been requested to keep the key of the house in his possession 
until Mr. By grave returned to claim it in his own person. 

Baffled, but not discouraged, Mrs. Lecount turned her steps next 
toward the back street of Aldborough, and astonished the servant’s 
relatives by conferring on them the honor of a morning call. 

Easily imposed on at starting by Mrs. Lecount’s pretense of call- 
ing to engage her, under the impression that she had left Mr. By- 
grave’s service, tfye servant did her best to answer the questions put 
to her. But she knew as little as the landlord of her master’s plans. 
All she could say about them was, that she had not been dismissed, 
and that she was to await the receipt of a note recalling her when 
necessary to her situation at North Shingles. Not having expected 
to find her better informed on this part of the subject, Mrs. Lecount 
smoothly shifted her ground, and led the woman into talking gen- 
erally of the advantages and defects of her situation in Mr. By- 
grave’s family. 

Profiting by the knowledge gained, in this indirect manner, of the 
little secrets of the household, Mrs. Lecount made two discoveries. 
She found out, in the first place, that the servant (having enough to 
do in attending to the coarser part of the domestic work) was in no 
position to disclose the secrets of Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe, which 
were known only to the young lady herself and to her aunt. In the 
second place, the housekeeper ascertained that the true reason of 
Mrs. Bygrave’s rigid seclusion was to be found in the simple fact 
that she was little better than an idiot, and that her husband was 
probably ashamed of allowing her to be seen in public. These ap- 
parently trivial discoveries enlightened Mrs. Lecount on a very im- 
portant point which had been previously involved in doubt. She 
was now satisfied that the likeliest way to obtaining a private in- 
vestigation of Magdalen’s wardrobe lay through deluding the imbe- 
cile lady, and not through bribing the ignorant servant. 

Having reached that conclusion — pregnant with coming assaults 
on the weakly-fortified discretion of poor Mrs. Wragge — the house- 
keeper cautiously abstained from exhibiting herself any longer un- 
der an inquisitive aspect. She changed the conversation to local 
topics, waited until she was sure of leaving an excellent impression 
behind her, and then took her leave. 

Three days passed ; and Mrs. Lecount and her master — each with 
their widely-different ends in view — watched with equal anxiety for 
the first signs of returning life in the direction of North Shingles. 
In that interval, no letter either from the uncle or the niece arrived 
for Noel Yanstone. His sincere feeling of irritation under this neg- 
lectful treatment greatly assisted the effect of those feigned doubts 


372 


NO NAME. 


on the subject of his absent friends which the captain had recom- 
mended him to express in the housekeeper’s presence. He con- 
fessed his apprehensions of having been mistaken, not in Mr. By- 
grave only, but even in his niece as well, with such a genuine air of 
annoyance that he actually contributed a new element of confusion 
to the existing perplexities of Mrs. Lecount. 

On the morning of the fourth day Noel Vanstone met the post- 
man in the garden ; and, to his great relief, discovered among the 
letters delivered to him a note from Mr. Bygrave. 

The date of the note was “ Woodbridge,” and it contained a few 
lines only. Mr. Bygrave mentioned that his niece was better, and 
that she sent her love as before. He proposed returning to Aldbor- 
ough on the next day, when he would have some new considerations 
of a strictly private nature to present to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s mind. 
In the mean time he would beg Mr. Vanstone not to call at North 
Shingles until he received a special invitation to do so — which in- 
vitation should certainly be given on the day when the family re- 
turned. The motive of this apparently strange request should be 
explained to Mr. Vanstone’s perfect satisfaction when he was once 
more united to his friends. Until that period arrived, the strictest 
caution was enjoined on him in all his communications with Mrs. 
Lecount ; and the instant destruction of Mr. Bygrave’s letter, after 
due perusal of it, was (if the classical phrase might be pardoned) a 
sine qua non. 

The fifth day came. Noel Vanstone (after submitting himself to 
the sine qua non , and destroying the letter) waited anxiously for re- 
sults ; while Mrs. Lecount, on her side, watched patiently for events. 
Toward three o’clock in the afternoon the carriage appeared again 
at the gate of North Shingles. Mr. By grave got out and tripped 
away briskly to the landlord’s cottage for the key. He returned 
with the servant at his heels. Miss Bygrave left the carriage ; her 
giant relative followed her example ; the house door was opened ; 
the trunks were taken off; the carriage disappeared, and the By- 
graves were at home again ! 

Four o’clock struck, five o’clock, six o’clock, and nothing hap- 
pened. In half an hour more, Mr. Bygrave — spruce, speckless, and 
respectable as ever — appeared on the Parade, sauntering composed- 
ly in the direction of Sea View. 

Instead of at once entering the house, he passed it; stopped, as 
if struck by a sudden recollection ; and, retracing his steps, asked for 
Mr. Vanstone at the door. Mr. Vanstone came out hospitably into 
the passage. Pitching his voice to a tone which could be easily 
heard by any listening individual through any open door in the 
bedroom regions, Mr. Bygrave announced the object of his visit on 
the door-mat in the fewest possible words. He had been staying 


NO NAME. 


373 


with a distant relative. The distant relative possessed two pictures 
— Gems by the Old Masters — which he was willing to dispose of, 
and which he had intrusted for that purpose to Mr. Bygrave’s care. 
If Mr. Noel Yanstone, as an amateur in such matters, wished to see 
the Gems, they would be visible in half an hour’s time, when Mr. 
Bygrave would have returned to North Shingles. 

Having delivered himself of this incomprehensible announcement, 
the arch-conspirator laid his significant forefinger along the side of 
his short Roman nose, said, “ Fine weather, isn’t it ? Good-after- 
noon !” and sauntered out inscrutably to continue his walk on the 
Parade. 

On the expiration of the half-hour Noel Yanstone presented him- 
self at North Shingles, with the ardor of a lover burning inextin- 
guishably in his bosom, through the superincumbent mental fog of 
a thoroughly bewildered man. To his inexpressible happiness, he 
found Magdalen alone in the parlor. Never yet had she looked so 
beautiful in his eyes. The rest and relief of her four days’ absence 
from Aldborough had not failed to produce their results; she had 
more than recovered her composure. Yibrating perpetually from 
one violent extreme to another, she had now passed from the pas- 
sionate despair of five days since to a feverish exaltation of spirits 
which defied all remorse and confronted all consequences. Her 
eyes sparkled ; her cheeks were bright with color ; she talked inces- 
santly, with a forlorn mockery of the girlish gayety of past days ; 
she laughed with a deplorable persistency in laughing ; she imitated 
Mrs. Lecount’s smooth voice, and Mrs. Lecount’s insinuating graces 
of manner, with an overcharged resemblance to the original, which 
was but the coarse reflection of the delicately-accurate mimicry of 
former times. Noel Yanstone, who had never yet seen her as he 
saw her now, was enchanted ; his weak head whirled with an in- 
toxication of enjoyment; his wizen cheeks flushed as if they had 
caught the infection from hers. The half-hour during which he 
was alone with her passed like five minutes to him. When that 
time had elapsed, and when she suddenly left him — to obey a pre- 
viously-arranged summons to her aunt’s presence — miser as he was, 
he would have paid at that moment five golden sovereigns out of 
his pocket for five golden minutes more passed in her society. 

The door had hardly closed on Magdalen before it opened again, 
and the captain walked in. He entered on the explanations which 
his visitor naturally expected from him with the unceremonious 
abruptness of a man hard pressed for time, and determined to make 
the most of every moment at his disposal. 

“ Since we last saw each other,” he began, “ I have been reckon- 
ing up the chances for and against us as we stand at present. The 
result on my own mind is this : If you are still at Aldborough when 


374 


NO NAME. 


that letter from Zurich reaches Mrs. Lecount, all the pains we have 
taken will have been pains thrown away. If your housekeeper had 
fifty brothers all dying together, she would throw the whole fifty 
over, sooner than leave you alone at Sea View while we are your 
neighbors at North Shingles.” 

Noel Vanstone’s flushed cheek turned pale with dismay. His 
own knowledge of Mrs. Lecount told him that this view of the case 
was the right one. 

“If we go away again,” proceeded the captain, “nothing will be 
gained, for nothing would persuade your housekeeper, in that case, 
that we have not left you the means of following us. You must 
leave Aldborough this time; and, what is more, you must go with- 
out leaving a single visible trace behind you for us to follow. If 
we accomplish this object in the course of the next five days, Mrs. 
Lecount will take the journey to Zurich. If we fail, she will be a 
fixture at Sea View, to a dead certainty. Don’t ask questions ! I 
have got your instructions ready for you, and I want your closest 
attention to them. Your marriage with my niece depends on your 
not forgetting a word of what I am now going to tell you. — One 
question first. Have you followed my advice ? Have you told 
Mrs. Lecount you are beginning to think yourself mistaken in 
me ?” 

“ I did worse than that,” replied Noel Vanstone, penitently. “I 
committed an outrage on my own feelings. I disgraced myself by 
saying that I doubted Miss Bygrave !” 

“ Go on disgracing yourself, my dear sir ! Doubt us both with all 
your might, and I’ll help you. One question more. Did I speak 
loud enough this afternoon ? Did Mrs. Lecount hear me ?” 

“Yes. Lecount opened her door; Lecount heard you. What 
made you give me that message ? I see no pictures here. Is this 
another pious fraud, Mr. Bygrave ?” 

“Admirably guessed, Mr. Vanstone! You will see the object of 
my imaginary picture-dealing in the very next words which I am 
now about to address to you. When you get back to Sea View, this 
is what you are to say to Mrs. Lecount. Tell her that my relative’s 
works of Art are two worthless pictures — copies from the Old Mas- 
ters, which I have tried to sell you as originals at an exorbitant price. 
Say you suspect me of being little better than a plausible impostor, 
and pity my unfortunate niece for being associated with such a ras- 
cal as I am. There is your text to speak from. Say in many words 
what I have just said in a few. You can do that, can’t you ?” 

“ Of course I can do it,” said Noel Vanstone. “ But I can tell you 
one thing — Lecount won’t believe me.” 

“Wait a little, Mr. Vanstone ; I have not done with my instruc- 
tions yet. You understand what I have just told you ? Very good. 


NO NAME. 


375 

We may get on from to-day to to-morrow. Go out to-morrow with 
Mrs. Lecount at your usual time. I will meet you on the Parade, 
and bow to you. Instead of returning my bow, look the other way. 
In plain English, cut me ! That is easy enough to do, isn’t it ?” 

“ She won’t believe me, Mr. Bygrave — she won’t believe me ?” 

“ Wait a little again, Mr. Vanstone. There are more instructions 
to come. You have got your directions for to-day, and you have 
got your directions for to-morrow. Now for the day after. The 
day after is the seventh day since we sent the letter to Zurich. On 
the seventh day decline to go out walking as before, from dread of 
the annoyance of meeting me again. Grumble about the smallness 
of the place ; complain of your health ;* wish you had never come to 
Aldborough, and never made acquaintances with the Bygraves ; and 
when you have well worried Mrs. Lecount with your discontent, ask v - 
her on a sudden if she can’t suggest a change for the better. If you 
put that question to her naturally, do you think she can be depend- 
ed on to answer it ?” 

“ She won’t want to be questioned at all,” replied Noel Vanstone, 
irritably. “ I have only got to say I am tired of Aldborough ; and, 
if she believes me — which she won’t; I’m quite positive, Mr. By- 
grave, she won’t ! — she will have her suggestion ready before I can 
ask for it.” 

“ Ay ! ay !” said the captain, eagerly. “ There is some place, then, 
that Mrs. Lecount wants to go to this autumn ?” 

“ She wants to go there (hang her !) every autumn.” 

u To go where ?” 

“ To Admiral Bartram’s — you don’t know him, do you ? — at St. 
Crux-in-the-Marsh.” 

“Don’t lose your patience, Mr. Vanstone ! What you are now tell- 
ing me is of the most vital importance to the object we have in view. 
Who is Admiral Bartram ?” 

“An old friend of my father’s. My father laid him under obliga- 
tions — my father ‘lent him money when they were both young men. 

I am like one of the family at St. Crux ; my room is always kept 
ready for me. Not that there’s any family at the admiral’s except 
his nephew, George Bartram. George is my cousin ; I’m as intimate 
with George as my father was with the admiral ; and I’ve been sharp- 
er than my father, for I haven’t lent my friend any money. Lecount 
always makes a show of liking George — I believe to annoy me. She 
likes the admiral too ; he flatters her vanity. He always invites her 
to come with me to St. Crux. He lets her have one of the best bed- 
rooms, and treats her as if she was a lady. She’s as proud as Luci- 
fer — she likes being treated like a lady — and she pesters me every 
autumn to go to St. Crux. What’s the matter ? What are you tat 
ing out your pocket-book for ?” 


NO NAME. 


376 


“I want the admiral’s address, Mr. Vanstone, for a purpose which 
I will explain immediately.” 

With those words, Captain Wragge opened his pocket-book and 
wrote down the address from Noel Yanstone’s dictation, as follows : 
“x\dmiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, near Ossory, Essex.” 

“Good!” cried the captain, closing his pocket book again. “The 
only difficulty that stood in our way is now cleared out of it. Pa- 
tience, Mr. Yanstone — patience ! Let us take up my instructions 
again at the point where we dropped them. Give me five minutes 
more attention, and you will see your way to your marriage as plain- 
ly as I see it. On the day after to-morrow you declare you are tired 
of Aldborough, and Mrs. Lecount suggests St. Crux. You don’t 
say yes or no on the spot ; you take the next day to consider it, and 
you make up your mind the last thing at night to go to St. Crux the 
first thing in the morning. Are you in the habit of superintending 
your own packing up, or do you usually shift all the trouble of it 
on Mrs. Lecount’s shoulders ?” 

“Lecount has all the trouble, of course ; Lecount is paid for it ! 
But I don’t really go, do I ?” 

“You go as fast as horses can take you to the railway without 
having held any previous communication with this house, either 
personally or by letter. You leave Mrs. Lecount behind to pack up 
your curiosities, to settle with the trades people, and to follow you 
to St. Crux the next morning. The next morning is the tenth morn- 
ing. On the tenth morning she receives the letter from Zurich ; and 
if you only carry out my instructions, Mr. Yanstone, as sure as you 
sit there, to Zurich she goes.” 

Noel Yanstone’s color began to rise again, as the captain’s strata- 
gem dawned on him at last in its true light. 

“ And what am I to do at St. Crux ?” he inquired. 

“Wait there till I call for you,” replied the captain. “ As soon as 
Mrs. Lecount’s back is turned, I will go to the church here and give 
the necessary notice of the marriage. The same day or the next, I 
will travel to the address written down in my pocket-book, pick you 
up at the admiral’s, and take you on to London with me to get the 
license. With that document in our possession, we shall be on our 
way back to Aldborough while Mrs. Lecount is on her way out to 
Zurich ; and before she starts on her return journey, you and my 
niece will be man and wife ! There are your future prospects for 
you. What do you think of them ?” 

“What a head you have got !” cried Noel Yanstone, in a sudden 
outburst of enthusiasm. “ You’re the most extraordinary man I 
ever met with. One would think you had done nothing all your 
life but take people in.” 

Captain Wragge received that unconscious tribute to his native 


NO NAME. 3 1 1 

genius with the complacency of a man who felt that he thoroughly 
deserved it. 

“ I have told you already, my dear sir,” he said, modestly, “ that I 
never do things by halves. Pardon me for reminding you that we 
have no time for exchanging mutual civilities. Are you quite sure 
about your instructions ? I dare not write them down, for fear of 
accidents. Try the system of artificial memory ; count your instruc- 
tions off after me, on your thumb and your four fingers. To-day 
you tell Mrs. Lecount I have tried to take you in with my relative’s 
works of Art. To-morrow you cut me on the Parade. The day 
after you refuse to go out, you get tired of Aldborough, and you 
allow Mrs. Lecount to make her suggestion. The next day you ac- 
cept the suggestion. And the next day to that you go to St. Crux. 
Once more, my dear sir ! Thumb — works of Art. Forefinger — cut 
me on the Parade. Middle finger — tired of Aldborough. Third 
finger — take Lecount’s advice. Little finger — off to St. Crux. 
Nothing can be clearer — nothing can be easier to do. Is there any 
thing you don’t understand? Any thing that I can explain over 
again before you go ?” 

“ Only one thing,” said Noel Yanstone. “ Is it settled that I am 
not to come here again before I go to St. Crux ?” 

“ Most decidedly !” answered the captain. “ The whole success 
of the enterprise depends on your keeping away. Mrs. Lecount 
will try the credibility of every thing you say to her by one test — 
the test of your communicating, or not, with this house. She will 
watch you night and day ! Don’t call here, don’t send messages, 
don’t write letters ; don’t even go out by yourself. Let her see you 
start for St. Crux on her suggestion, with the absolute certainty in 
her own mind that you have followed her advice without communi- 
cating it in any form whatever to me or to my niece. Do that, and 
she must believe you, on the best of all evidence for our interests, 
and the worst for hers — the evidence of her own senses.” 

With those last words of caution, he shook the little man warmly 
by the hand, and sent him home on the spot. 


CHAPTER X. 

On returning to Sea View, Noel Yanstone executed the instruc- 
tions which prescribed his line of conduct for the first of the five 
days with unimpeachable accuracy. A faint smile of contempt 
hovered about Mrs. Lecount’s lips while the story of Mr. Bygrave’s 
attempt to pass off his spurious pictures as originals was in prog- 
ress, but she did not trouble herself to utter a single word of re~ 


378 


NO NAME. 


mark when it had come to an end. “Just what I said!” thought 
Noel Vanstone, cunningly watching her face ; “ she doesn’t believe 
a word of it !” 

The next day the meeting occurred on the Parade. Mr. Bygrave 
took off his hat, and Noel Vanstone looked the other way. The 
captain’s start of surprise and scowl of indignation were executed 
to perfection, but they plainly failed to impose on Mrs. Lecount. 
“ I am afraid, sir, you have offended Mr. Bygrave to-day,” she iron- 
ically remarked. “ Happily for you, he is an excellent Christian ! 
and I venture to predict that he will forgive you to-morrow.” 

Noel Vanstone wisely refrained from committing himself to an 
answer. Once more he privately applauded his own penetration ; 
once more he triumphed over his ingenious friend. 

Thus far the captain’s instructions had been too clear and simple 
to be mistaken by any one. But they advanced in complication 
with the advance of time, and on the third day Noel Vanstone fell 
confusedly into the commission of a slight error. After expressing 
the necessary weariness of Aldborough, and the consequent anxiety 
for change of scene, he was met (as he had anticipated) by an im- 
mediate suggestion from the housekeeper, recommending a visit to 
St. Crux. In giving his answer to the advice thus tendered, he 
made his first mistake. Instead of deferring his decision until the 
next day, he accepted Mrs. Lecount’s suggestion on the day when it 
was offered to him. 

The consequences of this error were of no great importance. The 
housekeeper merely set herself to watch her master one day earlier 
than had been calculated on — a result which had been already 
provided for by the wise precautionary measure of forbidding Noel 
Vanstone all communication with North Shingles. Doubting, as 
Captain Wragge had foreseen, the sincerity of her master’s desire to 
break off his connection with the Bygraves by going to St. Crux, 
Mrs. Lecount tested the truth or falsehood of the impression pro- 
duced on her own mind by vigilantly watching for signs of secret 
communication on one side or on the other. The close attention 
with which she had hitherto observed the outgoings and incomings 
at North Shingles was now entirely transferred to her master. For 
the rest of that third day she never let him out of her sight ; she 
never allowed any third person who came to the house, on any pre- 
tense whatever, a minute’s chance of private communication with 
him. At intervals through the night she stole to the door of his 
room, to listen and assure herself that he was in bed ; and before 
sunrise the next morning, the coast-guardsman going his rounds was 
surprised to see a lady who had risen as early as himself engaged 
over her work at one of the upper windows of Sea View. 

On the fourth morning Noel Vanstone came down to breakfast 


379 


no' name. 

conscious of the mistake that he had committed on the previous 
day. The obvious course to take, for the purpose of gaining time, 
was to declare that his mind was still undecided. He made the 
assertion boldly when the housekeeper asked him if he meant to 
move that day. Again Mrs. Lecount offered no remark, and again 
the signs and tokens of incredulity showed themselves in her face. 
Vacillation of purpose was not at all unusual in her experience of 
her master. But on this occasion she believed that his caprice of 
conduct was assumed for the purpose of gaining time to communi- 
cate with North Shingles, and she accordingly set her watch on him 
once more with doubled and trebled vigilance. 

No letters came that morning. Toward noon the weather changed 
for the worse, and all idea of walking out as usual was abandoned. 
Hour after hour, while her master sat in one of the parlors, Mrs. Le- 
count kept watch in the other, with the door into the passage open, 
and with a full view of North Shingles through the convenient side- 
window at which she had established herself. Not a sign that was 
suspicious appeared, not a sound that was suspicious caught her ear. 
As the evening closed in, her master’s hesitation came to an end. 
He was disgusted with the weather ; he hated the place ; he foresaw 
the annoyance of more meetings with Mr. Bygrave, and he was de- 
termined to go to St. Crux the first thing the next morning. Le- 
count could stay behind to pack up the curiosities and settle with 
the trades-people, and could follow him to the admiral’s on the 
next day. The housekeeper was a little staggered by the tone and 
manner in which he gave these orders. He had, to her own certain 
knowledge, effected no communication of any sort with North Shin- 
gles, and yet he seemed determined to leave Aldborough at the ear- 
liest possible opportunity. For the first time she hesitated in her 
adherence to her own conclusions. She remembered that her mas- 
ter had complained of the Bygraves before they returned to Ald- 
borough ; and she was conscious that her own incredulity had once 
already misled her when the appearance of the traveling-carriage 
at the door had proved even Mr. Bygrave himself to be as good as 
his word. 

Still Mrs. Lecount determined to act with unrelenting caution to 
the last. That night, when the doors were closed, she privately 
removed the keys from the door in front and the door at the back. 
She then softly opened her bedroom window and sat down by it, 
with her bonnet and cloak on, to prevent her taking cold. Noel 
Vanstone’s window was on the same side of the house as her own. 
If any one came in the dark to speak to him from the garden be- 
neath, they would speak to his housekeeper as well. Prepared at 
all points to intercept every form of clandestine communication 
Which stratagem could invent, Mrs. Lecount watched through the 


380 


NO NAME. 


quiet night. When morning came, she stole down stairs before the 
servant was up, restored the keys to their places, and re-occupied 
her position in the parlor until Noel Vanstone made his appearance 
at the breakfast-table. Had he altered his mind ? No. He de- 
clined posting to the railway on account of the expense, but he was 
as firm as ever in his resolution to go to St. Crux. He desired that 
an inside place might be secured for him in the early coach. Sus- 
picious to the last, Mrs. Lecount sent the baker’s man to take the 
place. He was a public servant, and Mr. Bygrave would not sus- 
pect him of performing a private errand. 

The coach called at Sea View. Mrs. Lecount saw her master 
established in his place, and ascertained that the other three inside 
seats were already occupied by strangers. She inquired of the 
coachman if the outside places (all of which were not yet filled up) 
had their full complement of passengers also. The man replied in 
the affirmative. He had two gentlemen to call for in the town, and 
the others would take their places at the inn. Mrs. Lecount forth- 
with turned her steps toward the inn, and took up her position on 
the Parade opposite from a point of view which would enable her 
to see the last of the coach on its departure. In ten minutes more 
it rattled away, full outside and in ; and the housekeeper’s own eyes 
assured her that neither Mr. Bygrave himself, nor any one belonging 
to North Shingles, was among the passengers. 

There was only one more precaution to take, and Mrs. Lecount 
did not neglect it. Mr. Bygrave had doubtless seen the coach call 
at Sea View. He might hire a carriage and follow it to the railway 
on pure speculation. Mrs. Lecount remained within view of the 
inn (the only place at which a carriage could be obtained) for near- 
ly an hour longer, waiting for events. Nothing happened ; no car- 
riage made its appearance ; no pursuit of Noel Vanstone was now 
within the range of human possibility. The long strain on Mrs. 
Lecount’s mind relaxed at last. She left her seat on the Parade, 
and returned in higher spirits than usual, to perform the closing 
household ceremonies at Sea View. 

She sat down alone in the parlor and drew a long breath of re- 
lief. Captain Wragge’s calculations had not deceived him. The 
evidence of her own senses had at last conquered the housekeeper’s 
incredulity, and had literally forced her into the opposite extreme 
of belief. 

Estimating the events of the last three days from her own experi- 
ence of them ; knowing (as she certainly knew) that the first idea 
of going to St. Crux had been started by herself, and that her mas- 
ter had found no opportunity and shown no inclination to inform 
the family at North Shingles that he had accepted her proposal, 
Mrs. Lecount was fairly compelled to acknowledge that not a frag- 


NO NAME. 


381 


ment of foundation remained to justify the continued suspicion of 
treachery in her own mind. Looking at the succession of circum- 
stances under the new light thrown on them by results, she could 
see nothing unaccountable, nothing contradictory anywhere. The 
attempt to pass off the forged pictures as originals was in perfect 
harmony with the character of such a man as Mr. Bygrave. Her 
master’s indignation at the attempt to impose on him ; his plainly- 
expressed suspicion that Miss Bygrave was privy to it; his disap- 
pointment in the niece; his contemptuous treatment of the uncle 
on the Parade ; his weariness of the place which had been the scene 
of his rash intimacy with strangers, and his readiness to quit it that 
morning, all commended themselves as genuine realities to the 
housekeeper’s mind, for one sufficient reason. Her own eyes had 
seen Noel Vanstone take his departure from Aldborough without 
leaving, or attempting to leave, a single trace behind him for the 
Bygraves to follow. 

Thus far the housekeeper’s conclusions led her, but no further. 
She was too shrewd a woman to trust the future to chance and for- 
tune. Her master’s variable temper might relent. Accident might 
at any time give Mr. Bygrave an opportunity of repairing the error 
that he had committed, and of artfully regaining his lost place in 
Noel Vanstone’s estimation. Admitting that circumstances had at 
last declared themselves unmistakably in her favor, Mrs. Lecount 
was not the less convinced that nothing would permanently assure 
her master’s security for the future but the plain exposure of the 
conspiracy which she had striven to accomplish from the first— 
which she was resolved to accomplish still. 

“ I always enjoy myself at St. Crux,” thought Mrs. Lecount, open- 
ing her account-books and sorting the tradesmen’s bills. “ The 
admiral is a gentleman, the house is noble, the table is excellent. 
No matter ! Here at Sea View I stay by myself till I have seen the 
inside of Miss Bygrave’s wardrobe.” 

She packed her master’s collection of curiosities in their various 
cases, settled the claims of the trades-people, and superintended the 
covering of the furniture in the course of the day. Toward night- 
fall she went out, bent on investigation, and ventured into the gar- 
den at North Shingles under cover of the darkness. She saw the 
light in the parlor window, and the lights in the windows of the 
rooms up stairs, as usual. After an instant’s hesitation she stole to 
the house door, and noiselessly tried the handle from the outside. 
It turned the lock as she had expected, from her experience of 
houses at Aldborough and at other watering-places, but the door 
resisted her ; the door was distrustfully bolted on the inside. After 
making that discovery, she went round to the back of the house, 
and ascertained that the door on that side was secured in the same 


382 


NO NAME. 


manner. u Bolt your doors, Mr. Bygrave, as fast as you like,” said 
the housekeeper, stealing back again to the Parade. “You can't 
bolt the entrance to your servant’s pocket. The best lock you have 
may be opened by a golden key.” 

She went back to bed. The ceaseless watching, the unrelaxing 
excitement of the last two days, had worn her out. 

The next morning she rose at seven o’clock. In half an hour 
more she saw the punctual Mr. Bygrave — as she had seen him on 
many previous mornings at the same time — issue from the gate of 
North Shingles, with his towels under his arm, and make his way 
to a boat that was waiting for him on the beach. Swimming was 
one among the many personal accomplishments of which the captain 
was master. He was rowed out to sea every morning, and took his 
bath luxuriously in the deep blue water. Mrs. Lecount had already 
computed the time consumed in this recreation by her watch, and 
had discovered that a full hour usually elapsed from the moment 
when he embarked on the beach to the moment when he returned. 

During that period she had never seen any other inhabitant of 
North Shingles leave the house. The servant was no doubt at her 
work in the kitchen ; Mrs. Bygrave was probably still in her bed ; 
and Miss Bygrave (if she was up at that early hour) had perhaps 
received directions not to venture out in her uncle’s absence. The 
difficulty of meeting the obstacle of Magdalen’s presence in the 
house had been, for some days past, the one difficulty which all Mrs. 
Lecount's ingenuity had thus far proved unable to overcome. 

She sat at the window for a quarter of an hour after the captain’s 
boat had left the beach with her mind hard at work, and her eyes 
fixed mechanically on North Shingles — she sat considering what 
written excuse she could send to her master for delaying her de- 
parture from Aldborough for some days to come — when the door of 
the house she was watching suddenly opened, and Magdalen herself 
appeared in the garden. There was no mistaking her figure and 
her dress. She took a few steps hastily toward the gate, stopped 
and pulled down the veil of her garden hat as if she felt the clear 
morning light too much for her, then hurried out on the Parade 
and walked away northward, in such haste, or in such pre-occupa* 
tion of mind, that she went through the garden gate without closing 
it after her. 

Mrs. Lecount started up from her chair with a moment’s doubt 
of the evidence of her own eyes. Had the opportunity which she 
had been vainly plotting to produce actually offered itself to her of 
its own accord ? Had the chances declared themselves at last in 
her favor, after steadily acting against her for so long ? There w T as 
no doubt of it : in the popular phrase, “ her luck had turned.” She 
snatched up her bonnet and mantilla, and made for North Shingles 


NO NAME, 


383 


without an instant’s hesitation. Mr. By grave out at sea; Miss By- 
grave away for a walk ; Mrs. Bygrave and the servant both at home, 
and both easily dealt with — the opportunity was not to be lost; 
the risk was well worth running ! 

This time the house door was easily opened : no one had bolted 
it again after Magdalen’s departure. Mrs. Lecount closed the door 
softly, listened for a moment in the passage, and heard the servant 
noisily occupied in the kitchen with her pots and pans. “ If my 
lucky star leads me straight into Miss Bygrave’s room,” thought the 
housekeeper, stealing noiselessly up the stairs, “ I may find my way 
to her wardrobe without disturbing any body.” 

She tried the door nearest to the front of the house on the right- 
hand side of the landing. Capricious chance had deserted her al- 
ready. The lock was turned. She tried the door opposite, on her 
left hand. The boots ranged symmetrically in a row, and the razors 
on the dressing-table, told her at once that she had not found the 
right room yet. She returned to the right-hand side of the land- 
ing, walked down a little passage leading to the back of the house, 
and tried a third door. The door opened, and the two opposite ex- 
tremes of female humanity, Mrs. Wragge and Mrs. Lecount, stood 
face to face in an instant ! 

“ I beg ten thousand pardons !” said Mrs. Lecount, with the most 
consummate self-possession. 

“Lord bless us and save us!” cried Mrs. Wragge, with the most 
helpless amazement. 

The two .exclamations were uttered in a moment, and in that mo- 
ment Mrs. Lecount took the measure of her victim. Nothing of the 
least importance escaped her. She noticed the Oriental Cashmere 
Robe lying half made, and half unpicked again, on the table ; she 
noticed the imbecile foot of Mrs. Wragge searching blindly in the 
neighborhood of her chair for a lost shoe ; she noticed that there 
was a second door in the room besides the door by which she had 
entered, and a second chair within easy reach, on which she might 
do well to seat herself in a friendly and confidential way. “ Pray 
don’t resent my intrusion,” pleaded Mrs. Lecount, taking the chair. 
“ Pray allow me to explain myself !” 

Speaking in her softest voice, surveying Mrs. Wragge with a sweet 
smile on her insinuating lips, and a melting interest in her hand- 
some black eyes, the housekeeper told her little introductory series 
of falsehoods with an artless truthfulness of manner which the Fa- 
ther of Lies himself might have envied. She had heard from Mr. 
Bygrave that Mrs. Bygrave was a great invalid ; she had constantly 
reproached herself, in her idle half-hours at Sea View (where she 
lined the situation of Mr. Noel Vanstone’s housekeeper), for not hav- 
ing offered her friendly services to Mrs. Bygrave ; she had been di- 


384 


NO NAME. 


rected by her master (doubtless wed known to Mrs. Bygrave, as one 
of her husband’s friends, and, naturally, one of her charming niece’s 
admirers), to join him that day at the residence to which he had re- 
moved from Aldborough ; she was obliged to leave early, but she 
could not reconcile it to her conscience to go without calling to 
apologize for her apparent want of neighborly consideration ; she 
had found nobody in the house ; she had not been able to make the 
servant hear; she had presumed (not discovering that apartment 
down stairs) that Mrs. Bygrave’s boudoir might be on the upper 
story ; she had thoughtlessly committed an intrusion of which she 
was sincerely ashamed, and she could now only trust to Mrs. By- 
grave’s indulgence to excuse and forgive her. 

A less elaborate apology might have served Mrs. Lecount’s pur- 
pose. As soon as Mrs. Wragge’s struggling perceptions had grasp- 
ed the fact that her unexpected visitor was a neighbor well known 
to her by repute, her whole being became absorbed in admiration 
of Mrs. Lecount’s lady-like manners, and Mrs. Lecount’s perfectly- 
fitting gown ! “ What a noble way she has of talking !” thought 

poor Mrs. Wragge, as the housekeeper reached her closing sentence. 
“ And, oh my heart alive, how nicely she’s dressed !” 

“ I see I disturb you,” pursued Mrs. Lecount, artfully availing her- 
self of the Oriental Cashmere Robe as a means ready at hand of 
reaching the end she had in view — “ I see I disturb you, ma’am, 
over an occupation which, I know by experience, requires the closest 
attention. Dear, dear me, you are unpicking the dress again, I see, 
after it has been made ! This is my own experience again, Mrs. By- 
grave. Some dresses are so obstinate ! Some dresses seem to say 
to one, in so many words, ‘ No ! you may do what you like with me ; 
I won’t fit !’ ” 

Mrs. Wragge was greatly struck by this happy remark. She burst 
out laughing, and clapped her great hands in hearty approval. 

“ That’s what this gown has been saying to me ever since I first 
put the scissors into it,” she exclaimed, cheerfully. “ I know I’ve 
got an awful big back, but that’s no reason. Why should a gown 
be weeks on hand, and then not meet behind you after all ? It 
hangs over my Boasom like a sack — it does. Look here, ma’am, at 
the skirt. It won’t come right. It draggles in front, and cocks up 
behind. It shows my heels — and, Lord knows, I get into scrapes 
enough about my heels, without showing them into the bargain !” 

“ May I ask a favor ?” inquired Mrs. Lecount, confidentially. 
“ May I try, Mrs. Bygrave, if I can make my experience of any use 
to you ? I think our bosoms, ma’am, are our great difficulty. Now, 
this bosom of yours ? — Shall I say in plain words what I think ? 
This bosom of yours is an Enormous Mistake !” 

“ Don’t say that !” cried Mrs. W ragge, imploringly. “ Don’t, please, 


NO Name. 3 £5 

there’s a good soul ! It’s an awful big one, I know ; but it’s mod- 
eled, for all that, from one of Magdalen’s own.” 

She was far too deeply interested on the subject of the dress to 
notice that she had forgotten herself already, and that she had re- 
ferred to Magdalen by her own name. Mrs. Lecount’s sharp ears de- 
tected tile mistake the instant it was committed. “ So ! so !” she 
thought. “ One discovery already. If I had ever doubted my own 
suspicions, here is an estimable lady who would now have set me 
right.— I beg your pardon,” she proceeded, aloud, “ did you say this 
was modeled from one of your niece’s dresses ?” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Wragge. “It’s as like as two peas.” 

“Then,” replied Mrs. Lecount, adroitly, “there must be some seri- 
ous mistake in the making of your niece’s dress. Can you show it 
to me ?” 

“ Bless your heart — yes !” cried Mrs. Wragge. “ Step this way, 
ma’am ; and bring the gown along with you, please. It keeps slid- 
ing off, out of pure aggravation, if you lay it out on the table. There’s 
lots of room on the bed in here.” 

She opened the door of communication, and led the way eagerly 
into Magdalen’s room. As Mrs. Lecount followed, she stole a look 
at her watch. Never before had time flown as it flew that morning ! 
In twenty minutes more Mr. Bygrave would be back from his bath. 

“ There !” said Mrs. Wragge, throwing open the wardrobe, and 
taking a dress down from one of the pegs. “ Look there ! There’s 
plaits on her Boasom, and plaits on mine. Six of one, and half a 
dozen of the other ; and mine are the biggest — that’s all !” 

Mrs. Lecount shook her head gravely, and entered forthwith into 
subtleties of disquisition on the art of dress-making which had the 
desired effect of utterly bewildering the proprietor of the Oriental 
Cashmere Robe in less than three minutes. 

“ Don’t !” cried Mrs. Wragge, imploringly. “ Don’t go on like 
that ! I’m miles behind you ; and my head’s Buzzing already Tell 
us, like a good soul, what’s to be done. You said something about 
the pattern just now. Perhaps I’m too big for the pattern ? I can’t 
help it if I am. Many’s the good cry I had, when I was a growing 
girl, over my own size ! There’s half too much of me, ma’am — meas- 
ure me along or measure me across, I don’t deny it — there’s half too 
much of me any way.” 

“ My dear madam,” protested Mrs. Lecount, “ you do yourself a 
wrong ! Permit me to assure you that you possess a commanding 
figure — a figure of Minerva. A majestic simplicity in the form of a 
woman imperatively demands a majestic simplicity in the form of 
that woman’s dress. The laws of costume are classical ; the laws of 
costume must not be trifled with ! Plaits for Venus, puffs for Juno, 
folds for Minerva. I venture to suggest a total change of pattern. 


386 


NO NAME. 


Your niece has other dresses in her collection. Why may we not 
find a Minerva pattern among them ?” 

As she said those words, she led the way back to the wardrobe. 

Mrs. Wragge followed, and took the dresses out one by one, shak- 
ing her head despondently. Silk dresses appeared, muslin dresses 
appeared. The one dress which remained invisible was the dress 
of which Mrs. Lecount was in search. 

“There’s the lot of ’em,” said Mrs. Wragge. “They may do for 
Venus and the two other Ones (I’ve seen ’em in picters without a 
morsel of decent linen among the three), but they won’t do for Me.” 

“ Surely there is another dress left ?” said Mrs. Lecount, pointing 
to the wardrobe, but touching nothing in it. “ Surely I see some- 
thing hanging in the corner behind that dark shawl ?” 

Mrs. Wragge removed the shawl ; Mrs. Lecount opened the door 
of the wardrobe a little wider. There — hitched carelessly on the in- 
nermost peg — there, with its white spots, and its double flounce, was 
the brown Alpaca dress ! 

The suddenness and completeness of the discovery threw the 
housekeeper, practiced dissembler as she was, completely off her 
guard. She started at the sight of the dress. The instant after- 
ward her eyes turned uneasily toward Mrs. Wragge. Had the start 
been observed ? It had passed entirely unnoticed. Mrs. Wragge’s 
whole attention w T as fixed on the Alpaca dress: she was staring at 
it incomprehensibly, with an expression of the utmost dismay. 

“ You seem alarmed, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ What is there 
in the wardrobe to frighten you ?” 

“ I’d have given a crown - piece out of my pocket,” said Mrs. 
Wragge, “ not to have set my eyes on that gown. It had gone clean 
out of my head, and now it’s come back again. Cover it up !” cried 
Mrs. Wragge, throwing the shawl over the dress in a sudden fit of 
desperation. “ If I look at it much longer, I shall think I’m back 
again in Vauxhall Walk!” 

Vauxhall Walk! Those two words told Mrs. Lecount she was 
on the brink of another discovery. She stole a second look at her 
watch. There was barely ten minutes to spare before the time when 
Mr. Bygrave might return ; there was not one of those ten minutes 
which might not bring his niece back to the house. Caution coun- 
seled Mrs. Lecount to go, without running any more risks. Curiosi- 
ty rooted her to the spot, and gave the courage to stay at all hazards 
until the time was up. Her amiable smile began to harden a little 
as she probed her way tenderly into Mrs. Wragge’s feeble mind. 

“You have some unpleasant remembrances of Vauxhall Walk?” 
she said, with the gentlest possible tone of inquiry in her voice. 
“ Or perhaps I should say, unpleasant remembrances of that dress 
belonging to your niece ?” 


NO NAME. 


387 


“The last time I saw her with that gown on,” said Mrs. Wragge, 
dropping into a chair and beginning to tremble, “ was the time when 
I came back from shopping, and saw the Ghost.” 

“The Ghost?” repeated Mrs. Lecount, clasping her hands in 
graceful astonishment. “ Dear madam, pardon me ! Is there such 
a thing in the world ? Where did you see it ? In Yauxhall Walk ? 
Tell me — you are the first lady I ever met with who has seen a 
Ghost — pray tell me !” 

Flattered by the position of importance which she had suddenly 
assumed in the housekeeper’s eyes, Mrs. Wragge entered at full 
length into the narrative of her supernatural adventure. The 
breathless eagerness with which Mrs. Lecount listened to her de- 
scription of the spectre’s costume, the spectre’s hurry on the stairs, 
and the spectre’s disappearance in the bedroom ; the extraordinary 
interest which Mrs. Lecount displayed on hearing that the dress in 
the wardrobe was the very dress in which Magdalen happened to 
be attired at the awful moment when the ghost vanished, encour- 
aged Mrs. Wragge to wade deeper and deeper into details, and to 
involve herself in a confusion of collateral circumstances out of 
which there seemed to be no prospect of her emerging for hours to 
come. Faster and faster the inexorable minutes flew by; nearer 
and nearer came the fatal moment of Mr. By grave’s return. Mrs. 
Lecount looked at her watch for the third time, without an attempt 
on this occasion to conceal the action from her companion’s notice. 
There were literally two minutes left for her to get clear of North 
Shingles. Two minutes would be enough, if no accident happened. 
She had discovered the Alpaca dress ; she had heard the whole 
story of the adventure in Yauxhall Walk ; and, more than that, she 
had even informed herself of the number of the house — which Mrs. 
Wragge happened to remember, because it answered to the number 
of years in her own age. All that was necessary to her master’s 
complete enlightenment she had now accomplished. Even if there 
had been time to stay longer, there was nothing worth staying for. 
“ I’ll strike this worthy idiot dumb with a coup d'etat ,” thought the 
housekeeper, “ and vanish before she recovers herself.” 

“ Horrible !” cried Mrs. Lecount, interrupting the ghostly narra- 
tive by a shrill little scream and making for the door, to Mrs. 
Wragge’s unutterable astonishment, without the least ceremony. 
“ You freeze the very marrow of my bones. Good-morning !” She 
coolly tossed the Oriental Cashmere Robe into Mrs. Wragge’s ex- 
pansive lap, and left the room in an instant. 

As she swiftly descended the stairs, she heard the door of the 
bedroom open. 

“ Where are your manners ?” cried a voice from above, hailing 
her feebly over the banisters. “What do you mean by pitching 


388 


NO NAME. 


my gown at me in that way? You ought to be ashamed of your- 
self!” pursued Mrs. Wragge, turning from a lamb to a lioness, as 
she gradually realized the indignity offered to the Cashmere Robe. 
“ You nasty foreigner, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” 

Pursued by this valedictory address, Mrs. Recount reached the 
house door, and opened it without interruption. She glided rapid- 
ly along the garden path, passed through the gate, and finding her- 
self safe on the Parade, stopped, and looked toward the sea. 

The first object which her eyes encountered was the figure of Mr. 
Bygrave standing motionless on the beach — a petrified bather, with 
his towels in his hand ! One glance at him was enough to show that 
he had seen the housekeeper passing out through his garden gate. 

Rightly conjecturing that Mr. Bygrave’s first impulse would lead 
him to make instant inquiries in his own house, Mrs. Lecount pur- 
sued her way back to Sea View as composedly as if nothing had 
happened. When she entered the parlor where her solitary break- 
fast was waiting for her, she was surprised to see a letter lying on 
the table. She approached to take it up with an expression of im- 
patience, thinking* it might be some tradesman’s bill which she had 
forgotten. 

It was the forged letter from Zurich. 


CHAPTER XI. 

The postmark and the handwriting on the address (admirably 
imitated from the original) warned Mrs. Lecount of the contents of 
the letter before she opened it. 

After waiting a moment to compose herself, she read the an- 
nouncement of her brother’s relapse. 

There was nothing in the handwriting, there was no expression 
in any part of the letter, which could suggest to her mind the faint- 
est suspicion of foul play. Not the shadow of a doubt occurred to 
her that the summons to her brother’s bedside was genuine. The 
hand that held the letter dropped heavily into her lap ; she became 
pale, and old, and haggard in a moment. Thoughts, far removed 
from her present aims and interests ; remembrances that carried her 
back to other lands than England, to other times than the time of 
her life in service, prolonged their inner shadows to the surface, and 
showed the traces of their mysterious passage darkly on her face. 
The minutes followed each other, and still the servant below stairs 
waited vainly for the parlor bell. The minutes followed each other, 
and still she sat, tearless and quiet, dead to the present and the 
future, living in the past. 


NO NAME. 


389 


The entrance of the servant, uncalled, roused her. With a heavy 
sigh, the cold and secret woman folded the letter up again and ad- 
dressed herself to the interests and the duties of the passing time. 

She decided the question of going or not going to Zurich, after a 
very brief consideration of it. Before she had drawn her chair to 
the breakfast-table, she had resolved to go. 

Admirably as Captain Wragge’s stratagem had worked, it might 
have failed — unassisted by the occurrence of the morning — to 
achieve this result. The very accident against which it had been 
the captain’s chief anxiety to guard — the accident which had just 
taken place in spite of him — was, of all the events that could have 
happened, the one event which falsified every previous calculation, 
by directly forwarding the main purpose of the conspiracy ! If 
Mrs. Lecount had not obtained the information of which she was 
in search before the receipt of the letter from Zurich, the letter 
might have addressed her in vain. She would have hesitated be- 
fore deciding to leave England, and that hesitation might have 
proved fatal to the captain’s scheme. 

As it was, with the plain proofs in her possession, with the gown 
discovered in Magdalen’s wardrobe, with the piece cut out of it in 
her own pocket-book, and with the knowledge, obtained from Mrs. 
Wragge, of the very house in which the disguise had been put on, 
Mrs. Lecount had now at her command the means of warning Noel 
Vanstone as she had never been able to warn him yet, or, in other 
words, the means of guarding against any dangerous tendencies 
toward reconciliation with the Bygraves which might otherwise 
have entered his mind during her absence at Zurich. The only 
difficulty which now perplexed her was the difficulty of deciding 
whether she should communicate with her master personally or by 
writing, before her departure from England. 

She looked again at the doctor’s letter. The word “ instantly,” 
in the sentence which summoned her to her dying brother, was 
twice underlined. Admiral Bart ram’s house was at some distance 
from the railway ; the time consumed in driving to St. Crux, and 
driving back again, might be time fatally lost on the journey to 
Zurich. Although she would infinitely have preferred a personal 
interview with Noel Vanstone, there was no choice on a matter of 
life and death but to save the precious hours by writing to him. 

After sending to secure a place at once in the early coach, she sat 
down to write to her master. 

Her first thought was to tell him all that had happened at North 
Shingles that morning. On reflection, however, she rejected the 
idea. Once already (in copying the personal description from Miss 
Garth’s letter) she had trusted her weapons in her master’s hands, 
and Mr. Bygrave had contrived to turn them against her. She re- 


390 


NO NAME. 


solved this time to keep them strictly in her own possession. The 
secret of the missing fragment of the Alpaca dress was known to 
no living creature but herself ; and, until her return to England, she 
determined to keep it to herself. The necessary impression might 
be produced on Noel Yanstone’s mind without venturing into de- 
tails. She knew by experience the form of letter which might be 
trusted to produce an effect on him, and she now wrote it in these 
words : 

“ Dear Mr. Noel, — Sad news has reached me from Switzerland. 
My beloved brother is dying, and his medical attendant summons 
me instantly to Zurich. The serious necessity of availing myself of 
the earliest means of conveyance to the Continent leaves me but one 
alternative. I must profit by the permission to leave England, if 
necessary, which you kindly granted to me at the beginning of my 
brother’s illness, and I must avoid all delay by going straight to 
London, ipstead of turning aside, as I should have liked, to see you 
first at St. Crux. 

“Painfully as I am affected by the family calamity which has 
fallen on me, I can not let this opportunity pass without adverting 
to another subject which seriously concerns your welfare, and in 
which (on that account) your old housekeeper feels the deepest 
interest. 

“ I am going to surprise and shock you, Mr. Noel. Pray don’t be 
agitated ! pray compose yourself ! 

“ The impudent attempt to cheat you, which has happily opened 
your eyes to the true character of our neighbors at North Shingles, 
was not the only object which Mr. Bygrave had in forcing himself 
on your acquaintance. The infamous conspiracy with which you 
were threatened in London has been in full progress against you, 
under Mr. Bygrave’s direction, at Aldborough. Accident — I will 
tell you what accident when we meet — has put me in possession of 
information precious to your future security. I have discovered, to 
an absolute certainty, that the person calling herself Miss By grave 
is no other than the woman who visited us in disguise at Yauxhall 
Walk. 

“ I suspected this from the first, but I had no evidence to support 
my suspicions; I had no means of combating the false impression 
produced on you. My hands, I thank Heaven, are tied no longer. 
I possess absolute proof of the assertion that I have just made — 
proof that your own eyes can see — proof that would satisfy you, if 
you were judge in a Court of Justice. 

“ Perhaps even yet, Mr. Noel, you will refuse to believe me ? Be 
it so. Believe me or not, I have one last favor to ask, which your 
English sense of fair play will not deny me. 


NO NAME. 


391 


“ This melancholy journey of mine will keep me away from En- 
gland for a fortnight, or, at most, for three weeks. You will oblige 
me — and you will certainly not sacrifice your own convenience and 
pleasure — by staying through that interval with your friends at St. 
Crux. If, before my return, some unexpected circumstance throws 
you once more into the company of the Bygraves, and if your natural 
kindness of heart inclines you to receive the excuses which they 
will, in that case, certainly address to you, place one trifling restraint 
on yourself, for your own sake, if not for mine. Suspend your flirta- 
tion with the young lady (I beg pardon of all other young ladies for 
calling her so !) until my return. If, when I come back, I fail to 
prove to you that Miss Bygrave is the woman who wore that dis- 
guise, and used those threatening words, in Yauxhall Walk, I will 
engage to leave your service at a day’s notice ; and I will atone for 
the sin of bearing false witness against my neighbor by resigning 
every claim I have to your grateful remembrance, on your father’s 
account as well as on your own. I make this engagement without 
reserves of any kind; and I promise to abide by it — if my proofs 
fail — on the faith of a good Catholic, and the word of an honest 
woman. Your faithful servant, Virginie Lecount.” 

The closing sentences of this letter — as the housekeeper well 
knew when she wrote them — embodied the one appeal to Noel 
Yanstone which could be certainly trusted to produce a deep and 
lasting effect. She might have staked her oath, her life, or her 
reputation, on proving the assertion which she had made, and have 
failed to leave a permanent impression on his mind. But when she 
staked not only her position in his service, but her pecuniary claims 
on him as well, she at once absorbed the ruling passion of his life 
in expectation of the result. There was not a doubt of it, in the 
strongest of all his interests — the interest of saving his money — he 
would wait. 

“Checkmate for Mr. Bygrave!” thought Mrs. Lecount, as she 
sealed and directed the letter. “The battle is over — the game is 
played out.” 

While Mrs. Lecount was providing for her master’s future securi- 
ty at Sea Yiew, events were in full progress at North Shingles. 

As soon as Captain Wragge recovered his astonishment at the 
housekeeper’s appearance on his own premises, he hurried into the 
house, and, guided by his own forebodings of the disaster that had 
happened, made straight for his wife’s room. 

Never, in all her former experience, had poor Mrs. Wragge felt 
the full weight of the captain’s indignation as she felt it now. All 
the little intelligence she naturally possessed vanished at ouce iu 


392 


NO NAME. 


the whirlwind of her husband’s rage. The only plain facts which 
he could extract from her were two in number. In the first place, 
Magdalen’s rash desertion of her post proved to have no better rea- 
son to excuse it than Magdalen’s incorrigible impatience : she had 
passed a sleepless night ; she had risen feverish and wretched ; and 
she had gone out, reckless of all consequences, to cool her burn- 
ing head in the fresh air. In the second place, Mrs. Wragge had, 
on her own confession, seen Mrs. Lecount, had talked with Mrs. 
Lecount, and had ended by telling Mrs. Lecount the story of the 
ghost. Having made these discoveries, Captain Wragge wasted 
no time in contending with his wife’s terror and confusion. He 
withdrew at once to a window which commanded an uninterrupted 
prospect of Noel Yanstone’s house, and there established himself on 
the watch for events at Sea View, precisely as Mrs. Lecount had 
established herself on the watch for events at North Shingles. 

Not a word of comment on the disaster of the morning escaped 
him when Magdalen returned and found him at his post. His flow 
of language seemed at last to have run dry. “ I told you what Mrs. 
Wragge would do,” he said, “and Mrs. Wragge has done it.” He 
sat unflinchingly at the window with a patience which Mrs. Lecount 
herself could not have surpassed. The one active proceeding in 
which he seemed to think it necessary to engage was performed by 
deputy. He sent the servant to the inn to hire a chaise and a fast 
horse, and to say that he would call himself before noon that day 
and tell the hostler when the vehicle would be wanted. Not a sign 
of impatience escaped him until the time drew near for the depart- 
ure of the early coach. Then the captain’s curly lips began to twitch 
with anxiety, and the captain’s restless fingers beat the devil’s tattoo 
unremittingly on the window-pane. 

The coach appeared at last, and drew up at Sea View. In a 
minute more, Captain Wragge’s own observation informed him that 
one among the passengers who left Aldborough that morning was 
—Mrs. Lecount. 

The main uncertainty disposed of, a serious question — suggested 
by the events of the morning — still remained to be solved. Which 
was the destined end of Mrs. Lecount’s journey — Zurich or St. Crux ? 
That she would certainly inform her master of Mrs. Wragge’s ghost 
story, and of every other disclosure in relation to names and places 
which might have escaped Mrs. Wragge’s lips, was beyond all doubt. 
But of the two ways at her disposal of doing the mischief — either 
personally or by letter — it was vitally important to the captain to 
know which she had chosen. If she had gone to the admiral’s, no 
choice would be left him but to follow the coach, to catch the train 
by which she traveled, and to outstrip her afterward on the drive 
from the station in Essex to St. Crux. If, on the contrary, she had 


NO NAME. 


393 


been contented with writing to her master, it would only be neces- 
sary to devise measures for intercepting the letter. The captain de- 
cided on going to the post-office, in the first place. Assuming that 
the housekeeper had written, she would not have left the letter at 
the mercy of the servant — she would have seen it safely in the let- 
ter-box before leaving Aldborough. 

“ Good-morning,” said the captain, cheerfully addressing the post- 
master. “ I am Mr. Bygrave of North Shingles. I think you have 
a letter in the box, addressed to Mr. — ?” 

The postmaster was a short man, and consequently a man with a 
proper idea of his own importance. He solemnly checked Captain 
Wragge in full career. 

“ When a letter is once posted, sir,” he said, “ nobody out of the 
office has any business with it until it reaches its address.” 

The captain was not a man to be daunted, even by a postmas- 
ter. A bright idea struck him. He took out his pocket-book, in 
which Admiral Bartram’s address was written, and returned to the 
charge. 

“ Suppose a letter has been wrongly directed by mistake ?” he 
began. And suppose the writer wants to correct the error after the 
Jetter is put into the box ?” 

“ When a letter is once posted, sir,” reiterated the impenetrable 
local authority, “ nobody out of the office touches it on any pretense 
whatever.” 

“ Granted, with all my heart,” persisted the captain. u I don’t 
want to touch it — I only want to explain myself. A lady has post- 
ed a letter here, addressed to 4 Noel Yanstone, Esq., Admiral Bar- 
tram’s, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, Essex.’ She wrote in a great hurry, 
and she is not quite certain whether she added the name of the 
post-town, 4 Ossory.’ It is of the last importance that the delivery 
of the letter should not be delayed. What is to hinder your facili- 
tating the post-office work, and obliging a lady, by adding the name 
of the post-town (if it happens to be left out), with your own hand ? 
I put it to you as a zealous officer, what possible objection can there 
be to granting my request ?” 

The postmaster was compelled to acknowledge that there could 
be no objection, provided nothing but a necessary line was added 
to the address, provided nobody touched the letter but himself, and 
provided the precious time of the post-office was not suffered to run 
to waste. As there happened to be nothing particular to do at that 
moment, he would readily oblige the lady at Mr. Bygrave’s request. 

Captain Wragge watched the postmaster’s hands, as they sorted 
the letters in the box, with breathless eagerness. Was the letter 
there ? Would the hands of the zealous public servant suddenly 
stop ? Yes ! They stopped, and picked out a letter from the rest. 


394 


NO NAME. 


“ 1 Noel Yanstone, Esquire,’ did you say ?” asked the postmaster, 
keeping the letter in his own hand. 

“ 1 Noel Yanstone, Esquire,’ ” replied the captain, “ ‘Admiral Bar- 
tram’s, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh.’ ” 

“ Ossory, Essex,” chimed in the postmaster, throwing the letter 
back into the box. “ The lady has made no mistake, sir. The ad- 
dress is quite right.” 

Nothing but a timely consideration of the heavy debt he owed 
to appearances prevented Captain Wragge from throwing his tall 
white hat up into the air as soon as he found the street once more. 
All further doubt was now at an end. Mrs. Lecount had written to 
her master — therefore Mrs. Lecount was on her way to Zurich ! 

With his head higher than ever, with the tails of his respectable 
frock-coat floating behind him in the breeze, with his bosom’s na- 
tive impudence sitting lightly on its throne, the captain strutted to 
the inn and called for the railway time-table. After making cer- 
tain calculations (in black and white, as a matter of course), he or- 
dered his chaise to be ready in an hour — so as to reach the rail- 
way in time for the second train running to London — with which 
there happened to be no communication from Aldborough by 
coach. 

His next proceeding was of a far more serious kind ; his next pro- 
ceeding implied a terrible certainty of success. The day of the 
week was Thursday. From the inn he went to the church, saw the 
clerk, and gave the necessary notice for a marriage by license on the 
following Monday. 

Bold as he was, his nerves were a little shaken by this last achieve- 
ment ; his hand trembled as it lifted the latch of the garden gate. 
He doctored his nerves with brandy-and-water before he sent for 
Magdalen to inform her of the proceedings of the morning. Anoth- 
er outbreak might reasonably be expected when she heard that the 
last irrevocable step had been taken, and that notice had been given 
of the wedding-day. 

The captain’s watch warned him to lose no time in emptying his 
glass. In a few minutes he sent the necessary message up stairs. 
While waiting for Magdalen’s appearance, he provided himself with 
certain materials which were now necessary to carry the enterprise 
to its crowning point. In the first place, he wrote his assumed 
name (by no means in so fine a hand as usual) on a blank visiting- 
card, and added underneath these words : “ Not a moment is to be 
lost. I am waiting for you at the door — come down to me direct- 
ly.” His next proceeding was to take some half-dozen envelopes 
out of the case, and to direct them all alike to the following ad- 
dress : “ Thomas Bygrave, Esq., Mussared’s Hotel, Salisbury Street, 
Strand, London.” After carefully placing the envelopes and the 



» 


77V 




NO NAME. 397 

card in his breast-pocket, he shut up the desk. As he rose from 
the writing-table, Magdalen came into the room. 

The captain took a moment to decide on the best method of 
opening the interview, and determined, in his own phrase, to dash 
at it. In two words he told Magdalen what had happened, and in- 
formed her that Monday was to be her wedding-day. 

He was prepared to quiet her, if she burst into a frenzy of passion; 
to reason with her, if she begged for time ; to sympathize with her, 
if she melted into tears. To his inexpressible surprise, results falsi- 
fied all his calculations. She heard him without uttering a word, 
without shedding a tear. When he had done, she dropped into a 
'chair. Her large gray eyes stared at him vacantly. In one myste- 
rious instant all her beauty left her ; her face stiffened awfully, like 
the face of a corpse. For the first time in the captain’s experience 
of her, fear — all-mastering fear — had taken possession of her, body 
and soul. 

“You are not flinching,” he said, trying to rouse her. “Surely 
you are not flinching at the last moment ?” 

No light of intelligence came into her eyes, no change passed 
over her face. But she heard him — for she moved a little in the 
chair, and slowly shook her head. 

“ You planned this marriage of your own free-will,” pursued the 
captain, with the furtive look and the faltering voice of a man ill 
at ease. “ It was your own idea — not mine. I won’t have the re- 
sponsibility laid on my shoulders — no ! not for twice two hundred 
pounds. If your resolution fails you ; if you think better of it — ?” 

He stopped. Her face was changing; her lips were moving at 
last. She slowly raised her left hand, with the fingers outspread ; 
she looked at it as if it was a hand that was strange to her ; she 
counted the days on it, the days before the marriage. 

“Friday, one,” she whispered to herself; “ Saturday, two ; Sunday, 
three ; Monday — ” Her hands dropped into her lap, her face stiff- 
ened again; the deadly fear fastened its paralyzing hold on her 
once more, and the next words died away on her lips. 

Captain Wragge took out his handkerchief and wiped his fore- 
head. 

“Damn the two hundred pounds!” he said. “Two thousand 
wouldn’t pay me for this !” 

He put the handkerchief back, took the envelopes which he had 
addressed to himself out of his pocket, and, approaching her closely 
for the first time, laid his hand on her arm. 

“ Rouse yourself,” he said, “ I have a last word to say to you. 
Can you listen ?” 

She struggled, and roused herself — a faint tinge of color stole 
over her white cheeks — she bowed her head. 


398 


NO NAME. 


“ Look at these,” pursued Captain Wragge, holding up the enve- 
lopes. w If I turn these to the use for which they have been written, 
Mrs. Lecount’s master will never receive Mrs. Lecount’s letter. If 
I tear them up, he will know by to-morrow’s post that you are the 
woman who visited him in Yauxhall Walk. Say the word ! Shall 
I tear the envelopes up, or shall I put them back in my pocket ?” 

There was a pause of dead silence. The murmur of the summer 
waves on the shingle of the beach and the voices of the summer 
idlers on the Parade floated through the open window, and filled 
the empty stillness of the room. 

She raised her head ; she lifted her hand and pointed steadily to 
the envelopes. 

“ Put them back,” she said. 

“ Do you mean it ?” he asked. 

“ I mean it.” 

As she gave that answer, there was a sound of wheels on the road 
outside. 

“ You hear those wheels?” said Captain Wragge. 

“ I hear them.” 

“You see the chaise?” said the captain, pointing through the 
window as the chaise which had been ordered from the inn made 
its appearance at the garden gate. 

“ I see it.” 

“ And, of your own free-will, you tell me to go ?” 

“ Yes. Go !” 

Without another word he left her. The servant was waiting at 
the door with his traveling-bag. “ Miss Bygrave is not well,” he 
said. “ Tell your mistress to go to her in the parlor.” 

He stepped into the chaise, and started on the first stage of the 
journey to St. Crux. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Toward three o’clock in the afternoon Captain Wragge stopped 
at the nearest station to Ossory which the railway passed in its 
course through Essex. Inquiries made on the spot informed him 
that he might drive to St. Crux, remain there for a quarter of an 
hour, and return to the station in time for an evening train to Lon- 
don. In ten minutes more the captain was on the road again, driv- 
ing rapidly in the direction of the coast. 

After proceeding some miles on the highway, the carriage turned 
off, and the coachman involved himself in an intricate net-work of 
cross-roads. 


NO NAME. 


399 


“ Are we far from St. Crux ?” asked the captain, growing impa- 
tient, after mile on mile had been passed without a sign of reaching 
the journey’s end. 

“ You’ll see the house, sir, at the next turn in the road,” said the 
man. 

The next turn in the road brought them within view of the open 
country again. Ahead of the carriage, Captain Wragge saw a long 
dark line against the sky — the line of the sea-wall which protects 
the low coast of Essex from inundation. The flat intermediate 
country was intersected by a labyrinth of tidal streams, winding up 
from the invisible sea in strange fantastic curves — rivers at high 
water, and channels of mud at low. On his right hand was a quaint 
little village, mostly composed of wooden houses, straggling down 
to the brink of one of the tidal streams. On his left hand, farther 
away, rose the gloomy ruins of an abbey, with a desolate pile of 
buildings, which covered two sides of a square attached to it. One 
of the streams from the sea (called in Essex, “ backwaters ”) curled 
almost entirely round the house. Another, from an opposite quar- 
ter, appeared to run straight through the grounds, and to separate 
one side of the shapeless mass of buildings, which was in moderate 
repair, from another, which was little better than a ruin. Bridges 
of wood and bridges of brick crossed the stream, and gave access 
to the house from all points of the compass. No human creature 
appeared in the neighborhood, and no sound was heard but the 
hoarse barking of a house-dog from an invisible court-yard. 

“ Which door shall I drive to, sir ?” asked the coachman. “ The 
front or the back F 

“The back,” said Captain Wragge, feeling that the less notice he 
attracted in his present position, the safer that position might be. 

The carriage twice crossed the stream before the coachman made 
his way through the grounds into a dreary inclosure of stone. At 
an open door on the inhabited side of the place sat a weather-beat- 
en old man, busily at work on a half-finished model of a ship. He 
rose and came to the carriage door, lifting up his spectacles on his 
forehead, and looking disconcerted at the appearance of a stranger. 

“ Is Mr. Noel Yanstone staying here ?” asked Captain Wragge. 

“Yes, sir,” replied the old man. “Mr. Noel came yesterday.” 

“ Take that card to Mr. Yanstone, if you please,” said the captain, 
“ and say I am waiting here to see him.” 

In a few minutes Noel Yanstone made his appearance, breathless 
and eager — absorbed in anxiety for news from Aldborough. Cap- 
tain Wragge opened the carriage door, seized his outstretched hand, 
and pulled him in without ceremony. 

“ Your housekeeper has gone,” whispered the captain, “ and you 
are to be married on Monday. Don’t agitate yourself, and don’t ex- 


400 


NO NAME. 


press your feelings — there isn’t time for it. Get the first active serv- 
ant you can find in the house to pack your bag in ten minutes, take 
leave of the admiral, and come back at once with me to the London 
train.” 

Noel Vanstone faintly attempted to ask a question. The captain 
declined to hear it. 

“ As much talk as you like on the road,” he said. “ Time is too 
precious for talking here. How do we know Lecount may not think 
better of it ? How do we know she may not turn back before she 
gets to Zurich ?” 

That startling consideration terrified Noel Vanstone into instant 
submission. 

“ What shall I say to the admiral ?” he asked, helplessly. 

“ Tell him you are going to be married, to be sure ! What does 
it matter, now Lecount’s back is turned ? If he wonders you didn’t 
tell him before, say it’s a runaway match, and the bride is waiting 
for you. Stop ! Any letters addressed to you in your absence will 
be sent to this place, of course ? Give the admiral these envelopes, 
and tell him to forward your letters under cover to me. I am an 
old customer at the hotel we are going to ; and if we find the place 
full, the landlord may be depended on to take care of any letters 
with my name on them. A safe address in London for your corre- 
spondence may be of the greatest importance. How do we know 
Lecount may not write to you on her way to Zurich ?” 

“ What a head you have got !” cried Noel Vanstone, eagerly tak- 
ing the envelopes. “ You think of every thing.” 

He left the carriage in high excitement, and ran back into the 
house. In ten minutes more Captain Wragge had him in safe cus- 
tody, and the horses started on their return journey. 

The travelers reached London in good time that evening, and 
found accommodation at the hotel. 

Knowing the restless, inquisitive nature of the man he had to deal 
with, Captain Wragge had anticipated some little difficulty and em- 
barrassment in meeting the questions which Noel Vanstone might 
put to him on the way to London. To his great reLef, a startling 
domestic discovery absorbed his traveling companion’s whole atten- 
tion at the outset of the journey. By some extraordinary oversight, 
Miss Bygrave had been left, on the eve of her marriage, unprovided 
with a maid. Noel Vanstone declared that he would take the whole 
responsibility of correcting this deficiency in the arrangements, on 
his own shoulders ; he would not trouble Mr. Bygrave to give him 
any assistance ; he would confer, when they got to their journey’s 
end, with the landlady of the hotel, and would examine the candi- 
dates for the vacant office himself. All the way to London, he re- 
turned again and again to the same subject ; all the evening, at the 


NO NAME. 


401 


hotel, he was in and out of the landlady’s sitting-room, until he fair- 
ly obliged her to lock the door. In every other proceeding which 
related to his marriage, he had been kept in the background ; he 
had been compelled to follow in the footsteps of his ingenious friend. 
In the matter of the lady’s maid he claimed his fitting position at 
last — he followed nobody ; he took the lead ! 

The forenoon of the next day was devoted to obtaining the license 
— the personal distinction of making the declaration on oath being 
eagerly accepted by Noel Vanstone, who swore, in perfect good faith 
(on information previously obtained from the captain), that the lady 
was of age. The document procured, the bridegroom returned to 
examine the characters and qualifications of the women-servants out 
of the place whom the landlady had engaged to summon to the ho- 
tel, while Captain Wragge turned his steps, u on business personal to 
himself,” toward the residence of a friend in a distant quarter of 
London. 

The captain’s friend was connected with the law, and the captain’s 
business was of a twofold nature. His first object was to inform 
himself of the legal bearings of the approaching marriage on the fu- 
ture of the husband and the wife. His second object was to pro- 
vide beforehand for destroying all traces of the destination to which 
he might betake himself when he left Aldborough on the wedding- 
day. Having reached his end successfully in both these cases, he 
returned to the hotel, and found Noel Vanstone nursing his offended 
dignity in the landlady’s sitting-room. Three ladies’ maids had ap- 
peared to pass their examination, and had all, on coming to the ques- 
tion of wages, impudently declined accepting the place. A fourth 
candidate was expected to present herself on the next day ; and, un- 
til she made her appearance, Noel Vanstone positively declined re- 
moving from the metropolis. Captain Wragge showed his annoy- 
ance openly at the unnecessary delay thus occasioned in the return 
to Aldborough, but without producing any effect. Noel Vanstone 
shook his obstinate little head, and solemnly refused to trifle with 
his responsibilities. 

The first event which occurred on Saturday morning was the ar- 
rival of Mrs. Lecount’s letter to her master, inclosed in one of the 
envelopes which the captain had addressed to himself. He received 
it (by previous arrangement with the waiter) in his bedroom — read 
it with the closest attention — and put it away carefully in his pock- 
et-book. The letter was ominous of serious events to come when 
the housekeeper returned to England ; and it was due to Magdalen 
— who was the person threatened — to place the warning of danger 
in her own possession. 

Later in the day the fourth candidate appeared for the maid’s 
situation — a young woman of small expectations and subdued man- 


402 


NO NAME. 


ners, who looked (as the landlady remarked) like a person oven 
taken by misfortune. She passed the ordeal of examination suc- 
cessfully, and accepted the wages offered without a murmur. The 
engagement having been ratified on both sides, fresh delays ensued, 
of which Noel Yanstone was once more the cause. He had not yet 
made up his mind whether he would, or would not, give more than 
a guinea for the wedding-ring ; and he wasted the rest of the day 
to such disastrous purpose in one jeweler’s shop after another, that 
he and the captain, and the new lady’s maid (who traveled with 
them), were barely in time to catch the last train from London that 
evening. 

It was late at night when they left the railway at the nearest sta- 
tion to Aldborough. Captain Wragge had been strangely silent all 
through the journey. His mind was ill at ease. He had left Mag- 
dalen, under very critical circumstances, with no fit person to con- 
trol her, and he was wholly ignorant of the progress of events in 
his absence at North Shingles. 


CHAPTER Xin. 

What had happened at Aldborough in Captain Wragge’s ab- 
sence ? 

Events had occurred which the captain’s utmost dexterity might 
have found it hard to remedy. 

As soon as the chaise had left North Shingles, Mrs. Wragge re- 
ceived the message which her husband had charged the servant to 
deliver. She hastened into the parlor, bewildered by her stormy 
interview with the captain, and penitently conscious that she had 
done wrong, without knowing what the wrong was. If Magdalen’s 
mind had been unoccupied by the one idea of the marriage which 
now filled it — if she had possessed composure enough to listen to 
Mrs. Wragge’s rambling narrative of what had happened during her 
interview with the housekeeper — Mrs. Lecount’s visit to the ward- 
robe must, sooner or later, have formed part of the disclosure ; and 
Magdalen, although she might never have guessed the truth, must 
at least have been warned that there was some element of danger 
lurking treacherously in the Alpaca dress. As it was, no such con- 
sequence as this followed Mrs. Wragge’s appearance in the parlor; 
for no such consequence was now possible. 

Events which had happened earlier in the morning, events which 
had happened for days and weeks past, had vanished as completely 
from Magdalen’s mind as if they had never taken place. The horror 
of the coming Monday — the merciless certainty implied in the ap- 


NO NAME. 


403 


pointment of the day and hour — petrified all feeling in her, and an- 
nihilated all thought. Mrs. Wragge made three separate attempts 
to enter on the subject of the housekeeper’s visit. The first time 
she might as well have addressed herself to the wind, or to the sea. 
The second attempt seemed likely to be more successful. Magda- 
len sighed, listened for a moment indifferently, and then dismissed 
the subject. “ It doesn’t matter,” she said. “ The end has come all 
the same. I’m not angry with you. Say no more.” Later in the 
day, from not knowing what else to talk about, Mrs. Wragge tried 
again. This time Magdalen turned on her impatiently. “ For God’s 
sake, don’t worry me about trifles ! I can’t bear it.” Mrs. Wragge 
closed her lips on the spot, and returned to the subject no more. 
Magdalen, who had been kind to her at all other times, had angrily 
forbidden it. The captain — utterly ignorant of Mrs. Lecount’s in- 
terest in the secrets of the wardrobe — had never so much as ap- 
proached it. All the information that he had extracted from his 
wife’s mental confusion, he had extracted by putting direct ques- 
tions, derived purely from the resources of his own knowledge. He 
had insisted on plain answers, without excuses of any kind ; he had 
carried his point as usual ; and his departure the same morning had 
left him no chance of re-opening the question, even if his irritation 
against his wife had permitted him to do so. There the Alpaca 
dress hung, neglected in the dark — the unnoticed, unsuspected cen- 
tre of dangers that were still to come. 

Toward the afternoon Mrs. Wragge took courage to start a sug- 
gestion of her own — she pleaded for a little turn in the fresh air. 

Magdalen passively put on her hat ; passively accompanied her 
companion along the public walk, until they reached its northward 
extremity. Here the beach was left solitary, and here they sat down, 
side by side, on the shingle. It was a bright, exhilarating day; 
pleasure-boats were sailing on the calm blue water; Aldborough 
was idling happily afloat and ashore. Mrs. Wragge recovered her 
spirits in the gayety of the prospect — she amused herself like a child, 
by tossing pebbles into the sea. From time to time she stole a ques- 
tioning glance at Magdalen, and saw no encouragement in her man- 
ner, no change to cordiality in her face. She sat silent on the slope 
of the shingle, with her elbow on her knee, and her head resting on 
her hand, looking out over the sea — looking with rapt attention, and 
yet with eyes that seemed to notice nothing. Mrs. Wragge wearied 
of the pebbles, and lost her interest in looking at the pleasure-boats. 
Her great head began to nod heavily, and she dozed in the warm, 
drowsy air. When she woke, the pleasure-boats were far off ; their 
sails were white specks in the distance. The idlers on the beach 
were thinned in number ; the sun was low in the heaven ; the blue 
sea was darker, and rippled by a breeze. Changes on sky and earth 


404 


NO NAME. 


and ocean told of the waning day ; change was everywhere — except 
close at her side. There Magdalen sat, in the same position, with 
weary eyes that still looked over the sea, and still saw nothing. 

“ Oh, do speak to me !” said Mrs. Wragge. 

Magdalen started, and looked about her vacantly. 

“ It’s late,” she said, shivering under the first sensation that reach- 
ed her of the rising breeze. “ Come home ; you want your tea.” 

They walked home in silence. 

“Don’t be angry with me for asking,” said Mrs. Wragge, as they 
sat together at the tea-table. “ Are you troubled, my dear, in your 
mind ?” 

“Yes,” replied Magdalen. “Don’t notice me. My trouble will 
soon be over.” 

She waited patiently until Mrs. Wragge had made an end of the 
meal, and then went up stairs to her own room. 

“ Monday !” she said, as she sat down at her toilet-table. “ Some- 
thing may happen before Monday comes !” 

Her fingers wandered mechanically among the brushes and combs, 
the tiny bottles and cases placed on the table. She set them in or- 
der, now in one way, and now in another — then on a sudden pushed 
them away from her in a heap. For a minute or two her hands re- 
mained idle. That interval passed, they grew restless again, and 
pulled the two little drawers backward and forward in their grooves. 
Among the objects laid in one of them was a Prayer-book which had 
belonged to her at Combe-Raven, and which she had saved with her 
other relics of the past, when she and her sister had taken their fare- 
well of home. She opened the Prayer-book, after a long hesitation, 
at the Marriage Service, shut it again before she had read a line, and 
put it back hurriedly in one of the drawers. After turning the key 
in the locks, she rose and walked to the window. 

“ The horrible sea !” she said, turning from it with a shudder of 
disgust — “ the lonely, dreary, horrible sea !” 

She went back to the drawer, and took the Prayer-book out for 
the second time, half opened it again at the Marriage Service, and 
impatiently threw it back into the drawer. This time, after turning 
the lock, she took the key away, walked with it in her hand to the 
open window, and threw it violently from her into the garden. It 
fell on a bed thickly planted with flowers. It was invisible ; it was 
lost. The sense of its loss seemed to relieve her. 

“ Something may happen on Friday ; something may happen on 
Saturday ; something may happen on Sunday. Three days still !” 

She closed the green shutters outside the window and drew the 
curtains, to darken the room still more. Her head felt heavy ; her 
eyes were burning hot. She threw herself on her bed, with a sullen 
impulse to sleep away the time. 


NO NAME. 


405 


The quiet of the house helped her; the darkness of the room 
helped her ; the stupor of mind into which she had fallen had its ef- 
fect on her senses ; she dropped into a broken sleep. Her restless 
hands moved incessantly, her head tossed from side to side of the 
pillow, but still she slept. Ere long words fell by ones and twos 
from her lips ; words whispered in her sleep, growing more and 
more continuous, more and more articulate, the longer the sleep 
lasted — words which seemed to calm her restlessness, and to hush 
her into deeper repose. She smiled ; she was in the happy land of 
dreams ; Frank’s name escaped her. “ Do you love me, Frank ?” she 
whispered. “ Oh, my darling, say it again ! say it again !” 

The time passed, the room grew darker ; and still she slumbered 
and dreamed. Toward sunset — without any noise inside the house 
or out to account for it — she started up on the bed, awake again in 
an instant. The drowsy obscurity of the room struck her with ter- 
ror. She ran to the window, pushed open the shutters, and leaned 
far out into the evening air and the evening light. Her eyes de- 
voured the trivial sights on the beach ; her ears drank in the wel- 
come murmur of the sea. Any thing to deliver her from the waking 
impression which her dreams had left ! No more darkness, no more 
repose. Sleep that came mercifully to others came treacherously to 
her. Sleep had only closed her eyes on the future, to open them on 
the past. 

She went down again into the parlor, eager to talk — no matter 
how idly, no matter on what trifles. The room was empty. Per- 
haps Mrs. Wragge had gone to her work — perhaps she was too tired 
to talk. Magdalen took her hat from the table and went out. • The 
sea that she had shrunk from, a few hours since, looked friendly 
now. How lovely it was in its cool evening blue ! What a god- 
like joy in the happy multitude of waves leaping up to the light of 
Heaven ! 

She staid out until the night fell, and the stars appeared. The 
night steadied her. 

By slow degrees her mind recovered its balance, and she looked 
her position unflinchingly in the face. The vain hope that accident 
might defeat the very end for which, of her own free-will, she had 
ceaselessly plotted and toiled, vanished and left her ; self-dissipated 
in its own weakness. She knew the true alternative, and faced it. 
On one side was the revolting ordeal of the marriage ; on the other, 
the abandonment of her purpose. Was it too late to choose between 
the sacrifice of the purpose and the sacrifice of herself? Yes! too 
late. The backward path had closed behind her. Time that no 
wish could change, Time that no prayers could recall, had made her 
purpose a part of herself : once she had governed it ; now it gov- 
erned her. The more she shrank, the harder she struggled, the 


406 


NO NAME. 

more mercilessly it drove her on. No other feeling in her was 
strong enough to master it — not even the horror that was madden- 
ing her — the horror of her marriage. 

Toward nine o’clock she went back to the house. 

“ Walking again !” said Mrs. Wragge, meeting her at the door. 
u Come in and sit down, my dear. How tired you must be !” 

Magdalen smiled, and patted Mrs. Wragge kindly on the shoulder. 

“ You forget how strong I am,” she said. “ Nothing hurts me.” 

She lit her candle, and went up stairs again into her room. As 
she returned to the old place by her toilet-table, the vain hope in the 
three days of delay, the vain hope of deliverance by accident, came 
back to her — this time in a form more tangible than the form which 
it had hitherto worn. 

“Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Something may happen to him; 
something may happen to me. Something serious ; something fatal. 
One of us may die.” 

A sudden change came over her face. She shivered, though there 
was no cold in the air. She started, though there was no noise to 
alarm her. 

“ One of us may die. I may be the one.” 

She fell into deep thought, roused herself after a while, and, open- 
ing the door, called to Mrs. Wragge to come and speak to her. 

u You were right in thinking I should fatigue myself,” she said. 
“ My walk has been a little too much for me. I feel tired, and I am 
going to bed. Good-night.” She kissed Mrs. Wragge, and softly 
closed the door again. 

After a few turns backward and forward in the room, she abrupt- 
ly opened her writing-case and begcn a letter to her sister. The 
letter grew and grew under her hands ; she filled sheet after sheet 
of note-paper. Her heart was full of her subject : it was her own 
story addressed to Norah. She shed no tears, she was composed to 
a quiet sadness. Her pen ran smoothly on. After writing for more 
than two hours, she left off while the letter was still unfinished. 
There was no signature attached to it — there was a blank space re- 
served, to be filled up at some other time. After putting away the 
case, with the sheets of writing secured inside it, she walked to the 
window for air, and stood there looking out. 

The moon was waning over the sea. The breeze of the earlier 
hours had died out. On earth and ocean, the spirit of the Night 
brooded in a deep and awful calm. 

Her head drooped low on her bosom, and all the view waned 
before her eyes with the waning moon. She saw no sea, no sky. 
Death, the Tempter, was busy at her heart. Death, the Tempter, 
pointed homeward, to the grave of her dead parents in Combe- 
Hayen church-yard. 


NO NAME. 


407 


“ Nineteen last birthday,” she thought. “ Only nineteen !” She 
moved away from the window, hesitated, and then looked out again 
at the view. “ The beautiful night !” she said, gratefully. “ Oh, 
the beautiful night !” 

She left the window, and lay down on her bed. Sleep, that had come 
treacherously before, came mercifully now ; came deep and dreamless, 
the image of her last waking thought — the image of Death. 

Early the next morning, Mrs. Wragge went into Magdalen’s room, 
and found that she had risen betimes. She was sitting before the 
glass, drawing the comb slowly through and through her hair — 
thoughtful and quiet. 

“ How do you feel this morning, my dear ?” asked Mrs. Wragge. 
“ Quite well again ?” 

“ Yes.” 

After replying in the affirmative, she stopped, considered for a 
moment, and suddenly contradicted herself. “ No,” she said, “ not 
quite well. I am suffering a little from toothache.” As she altered 
her first answer in those words, she gave a twist to her hair with the 
comb, so that it fell forward and hid her face. 

At breakfast she was very silent, and she took nothing but a cup 
of tea. 

“ Let me go to the chemist’s and get something,” said Mrs. 
Wragge. 

“ No, thank you.” 

“ Do let me !” 

“ No !” 

She refused for the second time, sharply and angrily. As usual, 
Mrs. Wragge submitted, and let her have her own way. When 
breakfast was over, she rose, without a word of explanation, and 
went out. Mrs. Wragge watched her from the window, and saw 
that she took the direction of the chemist’s shop. 

On reaching the chemist’s door, she stopped — paused before en- 
tering the shop, and looked in at the window — hesitated, and walk- 
ed away a little — hesitated again, and took the first turning which 
led back to the beach. 

Without looking about her, without caring what place she chose, 
she seated herself on the shingle. The only persons who were near 
to her, in the position she now occupied, were a nurse-maid and 
two little boys. The youngest of the two had a tiny toy-ship in 
his hand. After looking at Magdalen for a little while with the 
quaintest gravity and attention, the boy suddenly approached her, 
and opened the way to an acquaintance by putting his toy com- 
posedly on her lap. 

“ Look at my ship,” said the child, crossing his hands on Mag* 
dalen’s knee. 


408 


NO NAME. 


She was not usually patient with children. In happier days she 
would not have met the boy’s advance toward her as she met it 
now. The hard despair in her eyes left them suddenly ; her fast- 
closed lips parted, and trembled. She put the ship back into the 
child’s hands, and lifted him on her lap. 

“ Will you give me a kiss ?” she said, faintly. 

The boy looked at his ship, as if he would rather have kissed 
the ship. 

She repeated the question — repeated it, almost humbly. The 
child put his hand up to her neck and kissed her. 

“ If I was your sister, would you love me ?” 

All the misery of her friendless position, all the wasted tenderness 
of her heart, poured from her in those words. 

“Would you love me ?” she repeated, hiding her face on the bo' 
som of the child’s frock. 

“ Yes,” said the boy. “ Look at my ship.” 

She looked at the ship through her gathering tears. 

“ What do you call it ?” she asked, trying hard to find her way 
even to the interest of a child. 

“ I call it Uncle Kirke’s ship,” said the boy. “ Uncle Kirke has 
gone away.” 

The name recalled nothing to her memory. No remembrances 
but old remembrances lived in her now. “ Gone ?” she repeated 
absently, thinking what she should say to her little friend next. 

“ Yes,” said the boy. “ Gone to China.” 

Even from the lips of a child, that word struck her to the heart. 
She put Kirke’s little nephew off her lap, and instantly left the 
beach. 

As she turned back to the house, the struggle of the past night 
renewed itself in her mind. But the sense of relief which the child 
had brought to her, the reviving tenderness which she had felt 
while he sat on her knee, influenced her still. She was conscious 
of a dawning hope, opening freshly on her thoughts, as the boy’s 
innocent eyes had opened on her face when he came to her on the 
beach. Was it too late to turn back ? Once more she asked her- 
self that question, and now, for the first time, she asked it in doubt. 

She ran up to her own room with a lurking distrust in her 
changed self which warned her to act, and not to think. Without 
waiting to remove her shawl or to take off her hat, she opened her 
writing-case, and addressed these lines to Captain Wragge as fast 
as her pen could trace them. 

“ You will find the money I promised you inclosed in this. My 
resolution has failed me. The horror of marrying him is more than 
I can face. I have left Aldborough. Pity my weakness, and forget 
me. Let us never meet again.” 


NO NAME. 


40b 


With throbbing heart, with eager, trembling fingers, she drew 
her little white silk bag from her bosom and took out the bank- 
notes to inclose them in the letter. Her hand searched impetuous- 
ly ; her hand had lost its discrimination of touch. She grasped the 
whole contents of the bag in one handful of papers, and drew them 
out violently, tearing some and disarranging the folds of others. 
As she threw them down before her on the table, the first object 
that met her eye was her own handwriting, faded already with time. 
She looked closer, and saw the words she had copied from her dead 
father’s letter — saw the lawyer’s brief and terrible commentary on 
them confronting her at the bottom of the page : 

Mr. Veinstone's daughters are Nobody's Children , and the lew leaves 
them helpless at their uncle's mercy. 

Her throbbing heart stopped; her trembling hands grew icily 
quiet. All the Past rose before her in mute, overwhelming re- 
proach. She took up the lines which her own hand had written 
hardly a minute since, and looked at the ink, still wet on the let- 
ters, with a vacant incredulity. 

The color that had risen on her cheeks faded from them once 
more. The hard despair looked out again, cold and glittering, in 
her tearless eyes. She folded the bank-notes carefully, and put 
them back in her bag. She pressed the copy of her father’s letter 
to her lips, and returned it to its place with the bank-notes. When 
the bag was in her bosom again, she waited a little, with her face 
hidden in her hands, then deliberately tore up the lines addressed 
to Captain Wragge. Before the ink was dry, the letter lay in frag- 
ments on the floor. 

“ No !” she said, as the last morsel of the torn paper dropped from 
her hand. “ On the way I go, there is no turning back.” 

She rose composedly, and left the room. While descending the 
stairs, she met Mrs. Wragge coming up. • “ Going out again, my 
dear ?” asked Mrs. Wragge. “ May I go with you ?” 

Magdalen’s attention wandered. Instead of answering the ques- 
tion, she absently answered her own thoughts. 

“ Thousands of women marry for money,” she said. “ Why 
shouldn’t I ?” 

The helpless perplexity of Mrs. Wragge’s face, as she spoke those 
words, roused her to a sense of present things. 

“ My poor dear !” she said ; “ I puzzle you, don’t I ? Never mind 
what I say — all girls talk nonsense, and I’m no better than the rest 
of them. Come! I’ll give you a treat. You shall enjoy yourself 
while the captain is away. We will have a long drive by ourselves. 
Put on your smart bonnet, and come with me to the hotel. I’ll tell 
the landlady to put a nice cold dinner into a basket. You shall 
have all the things you like, and I’ll wait on you. When you are 


410 


NO NAME. 


an old, Old woman, you will remember me kindly, won’t you ? You 
will say , 4 She wasn’t a bad girl ; hundreds worse than she was live and 
prosper, and nobody blames them.’ There ! there ! go and put your 
bonnet on. Oh, my God, what is my heart made of ! How it lives and 
lives, when other girls’ hearts would have died in them long ago !” 

In half an hour more she and Mrs. Wragge were seated together 
in the carriage. One of the horses was restive at starting. “ Flog 
him,” she cried angrily to the driver. “What are you frightened 
about ? Flog him ! Suppose the carriage was upset,” she said, 
turning suddenly to her companion ; “ and suppose I was thrown 
out and killed on the spot ? Nonsense ! don’t look at me in that 
way. I’m like your husband ; I have a dash of humor, and I’m 
only joking.” 

They were out the whole day. When they reached home again, 
i' was after dark. The long succession of hours passed in the fresh 
air left them both with the same sense of fatigue. Again that night 
Magdalen slept the deep dreamless sleep of the night before. And 
so the Friday closed. 

Her last thought at night had been the thought which had sus- 
tained her throughout the day. She had laid her head on the pil- 
low, with the same reckless resolution to submit to the coming trial, 
which had already expressed itself in words when she and Mrs. 
Wragge met by accident on the stairs. When she woke on the 
morning of Saturday, the resolution was gone. The Friday’s 
thoughts — the Friday’s events even — were blotted out of her mind. 
Once again, creeping chill through the flow of her young blood, 
she felt the slow and deadly prompting of despair which had come 
to her in the waning moonlight, which had whispered to her in the 
awful calm. 

“ I saw the end as the end must be,” she said to herself, “ on 
Thursday night. I have been wrong ever since.” 

When she and her companion met that morning, she reiterated 
her complaint of suffering from the toothache ; she repeated her re- 
fusal* to allow Mrs. Wragge to procure a remedy; she left the house 
after breakfast, in the direction of the chemist’s shop, exactly as she 
had left it on the morning before. 

This time she entered the shop without an instant’s hesitation. 

“ I have got an attack of toothache,” she said abruptly, to an 
elderly man who stood behind the counter. 

“ May I look at the tooth, Miss ?” 

“ There is no necessity to look. It is a hollow tooth. I think I 
have caught cold in it.” 

The chemist recommended various remedies which were in vogue 
fifteen years since. She declined purchasing any of them. 


NO NAME. 


411 


“ I have always found Laudanum relieve the pain better than any 
thing else,” she said, trifling with the bottles on the counter, and 
looking at them while she spoke, instead of looking at the chemist. 
“ Let me have some Laudanum.” 

“Certainly, Miss. Excuse my asking the question — it is only a 
matter of form. You are staying at Aldborough, I think ?” 

“ Yes. I am Miss Bygrave, of North Shingles.” 

The chemist bowed ; and, turning to his shelves, filled an ordi- 
nary half-ounce bottle with laudanum immediately. In ascertaining 
his customer’s name and address beforehand, the owner of the shop 
had taken a precaution which was natural to a careful man, but 
which was by no means universal, under similar circumstances, in 
the state of the law at that time. 

“ Shall I put you up a little cotton wool with the laudanum ?” he 
asked, after he had placed a label on the bottle, and had written a 
word on it in large letters. 

u If you please. What have you wist written on the bottle ?” 
She put the question sharply, with something of distrust as well as 
curiosity in her manner. 

The chemist answered the question by turning the label toward 
her. She saw written on it, in large letters — Poison. 

“ I like to be on the safe side, Miss,” said the old man, smiling. 
“Very worthy people in other respects are often sadly careless where 
poisons are concerned.” 

She began trifling again with the bottles on the counter, and put 
another question, with an ill-concealed anxiety to hear the answer. 

“ Is there danger,” she asked, “ in such a little drop of Laudanum 
as that ?” 

“ There is Death in it, Miss,” replied the chemist, quietly. 

“ Death to a child, or to a person in delicate health ?” 

“ Death to the strongest man in England, let him be who he 
may.” 

With that answer, the chemist sealed up the bottle in its wrap- 
ping of white paper and handed the laudanum to Magdalen across 
the counter. She laughed as she took it from him, and paid for it. 

“ There will be no fear of accidents at North Shingles,” she said. 
“ I shall keep the bottle locked up in my dressing-case. If it doesn’t 
relieve the pain, I must come to you again, and try some other rem- 
edy. Good-morning.” 

“ Good-morning, Miss.” 

She went straight back to the house without once looking up, 
without noticing any one who passed her. She brushed by Mrs. 
Wragge in the passage as she might have brushed by a piece of 
furniture. She ascended the stairs, and caught her foot twice in her 
dress, from sheer inattention to the common precaution of holding 


412 


NO NAME. 


it up. ihe trivial daily interests of life had lost their hold on her 
already. 

In the privacy of her own room, she took the bottle from its wrap- 
ping, and threw the paper and the cotton wool into the fire-place. 
At the moment when she did this there was a knock at the door. 
She hid the little bottle, and looked up impatiently. Mrs. Wragge 
came into the room. 

“ Have you got something for your toothache, my dear ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Can I do any thing to help you ?” 

“ No.” 

Mrs. Wragge still lingered uneasily near the door. Her manner 
showed plainly that she had something more to say. 

“ What is it ?” asked Magdalen, sharply. 

“Don’t be angry,” said Mrs. Wragge. “I’m not settled in my 
mind about the captain. He’s a great writer, and he hasn’t written. 
He’s as quick as lightning, and he hasn’t come back. Here’s Satur- 
day, and no signs of him. Has he run away, do you think ? Has 
any thing happened to him ?” 

“ I should think not. Go down stairs ; I’ll come and speak to 
you about it directly.” 

As soon as she was alone again, Magdalen rose from her chair, 
advanced toward a cupboard in the room which locked, and paused 
for a moment, with her hand on the key, in doubt. Mrs. Wragge’s 
appearance had disturbed the whole current of her thoughts. Mrs. 
Wragge’s last question, trifling as it was, had checked her on the 
verge of the precipice — had roused the old vain hope in her once 
more of release by accident. 

“ Why not ?” she said. “ Why may something not have happened 
to one of them ?” 

She placed the laudanum in the cupboard, locked it, and put the 
key in her pocket. “ Time enough still,” she thought, “ before Mon- 
day. I’ll wait till the captain comes back.” 

After some consultation down stairs, it was agreed that the serv- 
ant should sit up that night, in expectation of her master’s return. 
The day passed quietly, without events of any kind. Magdalen 
dreamed away the hours over a book. A weary patience of ex- 
pectation was all she felt now — the poignant torment of thought 
was dulled and blunted at last. She passed the day and the even- 
ing in the parlor, vaguely conscious of a strange feeling of aversion 
to going back to her own room. As the night advanced, as the 
noises ceased indoors and out, her restlessness began to return. 
She endeavored to quiet herself by reading. Books failed to fix 
her attention. The newspaper was lying in a corner of the room : 
she tried the newspaper next. 


NO NAME. 


413 


She looked mechanically at the headings of the articles ; she list- 
lessly turned over page after page, until her wandering attention 
was arrested by the narrative of an Execution in a distant part of 
England. There was nothing to strike her in the story of the crime, 
and yet she read it. It was a common, horribly common, act of 
bloodshed — the murder of a woman in farm-service by a man in the 
same employment who was jealous of her. He had been convicted 
on no extraordinary evidence, he had been hanged under no unusual 
circumstances. He had made his confession, when he knew there 
was no hope for him, like other criminals of his class, and the news- 
paper had printed it at the end of the article, in these terms : 

u I kept company with the deceased for a year or thereabouts. I 
said I would marry her when I had money enough. She said I had 
money enough now. We had a quarrel. She refused to walk out 
with me any more ; she wouldn’t draw me my beer ; she took up 
with my fellow-servant, David Crouch. I went to her on the Satur- 
day, and said I would marry her as soon as we could be asked in 
church if she would give up Crouch. She laughed at me. She 
turned me out of the wash-house, and the rest of them saw her turn 
me out. I was not easy in my mind. I went and sat on the gate — 
the gate in the meadow they call Pettit’s Piece. I thought I would 
shoot her. I went and fetched my gun and loaded it. I went out 
into Pettit’s Piece again. I was hard put to it to make up my mind. 
I thought I would try my luck — I mean try whether to kill her or 
not — by throwing up the Spud of the plow into the air. I said to 
myself, if it falls flat, I’ll spare her ; if it falls point in the earth, 
I’ll kill her. I took a good swing with it, and shied it up. It fell 
point in the earth. I went and shot her. It was a bad job, but I 
did it. I did it, as they said I did it at the trial. I hope the Lord 
will have mercy on me. I wish my mother to have my old clothes. 
I have no more to say.” 

In the happier days of her life, Magdalen would have passed over 
the narrative of the execution, and the printed confession which ac- 
companied it, unread ; the subject would have failed to attract her. 
She read the horrible story now — read it with an interest unintelli- 
gible to herself. Her attention, which had wandered over higher 
and better things, followed every sentence of the murderer’s hid- 
eously direct confession from beginning to end. If the man or the 
woman had been known to her, if the place had been familiar to her 
memory, she could hardly have followed the narrative more closely, 
or have felt a more distinct impression of it left on her mind. She 
laid down the paper, wondering at herself; she took it up once 
more, and tried to read some other portion of the contents. The 
effort was useless; her attention wandered again. She threw the 
paper away, and went out i/»to the garden. The night was dark; 


414 


NO NAME. 


the stars were few and faint. She could just see the gravel-walk^ 
she could just pace backward and forward between the house door 
and the gate. 

The confession in the newspaper had taken a fearful hold on her 
mind. As she paced the walk, the black night opened over the sea, 
and showed her the murderer in the field hurling the Spud of the 
plow into the air. She ran, shuddering, back to the house. The 
murderer followed her into the parlor. She seized the candle and 
went up into her room. The vision of her own distempered fancy 
followed her to the place where the laudanum was hidden, and van- 
ished there. 

It was midnight, and there was no sign yet of the captain’s return. 

She took from the writing-case the long letter which she had writ- 
ten to Norah, and slowly read it through. The letter quieted her. 
When she reached the blank space left at the end, she hurriedly 
turned back and began it over again. 

One o’clock struck from the church clock, and still the captain 
never appeared. 

She read the letter for the second time ; she turned back obsti- 
nately, despairingly, and began it for the third time. As she once 
more reached the last page, she looked at her watch. It was a quar- 
ter to two. She had just put the watch back in the belt of her dress, 
when there came to her — far off in the stillness of the morning — a 
sound of wheels. 

She dropped the letter, and clasped her cold hands in her lap and 
listened. The sound came on, faster and faster, nearer and nearer — 
the trivial sound to all other ears ; the sound of Doom to hers. It 
passed the side of the house ; it traveled a little further on ; it stop- 
ped. She heard a loud knocking — then the opening of a window — 
then voices — then a long silence — then the wheels again coming back 
— then the opening of the door below, and the sound of the captain’s 
voice in the passage. 

She could endure it no longer. She opened her door a little way 
and called to him. 

He ran up stairs instantly, astonished that she was not in bed. 
She spoke to him through the narrow opening of the door, keeping 
herself hidden behind it, for she was afraid to let him see her face. 

“ Has any thing gone wrong ?” she asked. 

“ Make your mind easy,” he answered. “ Nothing has gone wrong.” 

“ Is no accident likely to happen between this and Monday ?” 

“None whatever. The marriage is a certainty.” 

“ A certainty ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Good-night.” 

She put her hand out through the door. He took it with some 


NO NAME. 


415 


little surprise ; it was not often in his experience that she gave him 
her hand of her own accord. 

“ You have sat up too long,” he said, as he felt the clasp of her 
cold fingers. “ I am afraid you will have a bad night — I’m afraid 
you will not sleep.” 

She softly closed the door. 

“ I shall sleep,” she said, “ sounder than you think for.” 

It was past two o’clock when she shut herself up alone in her room. 
Her chair stood in its customary place by the toilet-table. She sat 
down for a few minutes thoughtfully, then opened her letter to No- 
rah, and turned to the end where the blank space was left. The last 

lines written above the space ran thus : “I have laid my whole 

heart bare to you ; I have hidden nothing. It has come to this. The 
end I have toiled for, at such terrible cost to myself, is an end which 
I must reach or die. It is wickedness, madness, what you will — but 
it is so. There are now two journeys before me to choose between. 
If I can marry him — the journey to the church. If the profanation 
of myself is more than I can bear — the journey to the grave !” 

Under that last sentence, she wrote these lines : 

“ My choice is made. If the cruel law will let you, lay me with 
my father and mother in the church-yard at home. Farewell, my 
love ! Be always innocent ; be always happy. If Frank ever asks 
about me, say I died forgiving him. Don’t grieve long for me, 
Nor ah — I am not worth it.” 

She sealed the letter, and addressed it to her sister. The tears 
gathered in her eyes as she laid it on the table. She waited until 
her sight was clear again, and then took the bank-notes once more 
from the little bag in her bosom. After wrapping them in a sheet 
of note-paper, she wrote Captain Wragge’s name on the in closure, 
and added these words below it : “ Lock the door of my room, and 
leave me till my sister comes. The money I promised you is in this. 
You are not to blame; it is my fault, and mine only. If you have 
any friendly remembrance of me, be kind to your wife for my sake.” 

After placing the inclosure by the letter to Norah, she rose and 
looked round the room. Some few little things in it were not in 
their places. She set them in order, and drew the curtains on ei- 
ther side at the head of her bed. Her own dress was the next ob- 
ject of her scrutiny. It was all as neat, as pure, as prettily arranged 
as ever. Nothing about her was disordered but her hair. Some 
tresses had fallen loose on one side of her head ; she carefully put 
them back in their places with the help of her glass. “ How pale I 
look !” she thought, with a faint smile. u Shall I be paler still when 
they find me in the morning ?” 

She went straight to the place where the laudanum was hidden, 


416 


NO NAME. 


and took it out. The bottle was so small that it lay easily in the 
palm of her hand. She let it remain there for a little while, and 
stood looking at it. 

“ Death !” she said. “ In this drop of brown drink — Death !” 

As the words passed her lips, an agony of unutterable horror 
seized on her in an instant. She crossed the room unsteadily, with 
a maddening confusion in her head, with a suffocating anguish at 
her heart. She caught at the table to support herself. The faint 
clink of the bottle, as it fell harmlessly from her loosened grasp and 
rolled against some porcelain object on the table, struck through 
her brain like the stroke of a knife. The sound of her own voice, 
sunk to a whisper — her voice only uttering that one word, Death — 
rushed in her ears like the rushing of a wind. She dragged herself 
to the bedside, and rested her head against it, sitting on the floor. 
“ Oh, my life ! my life !” she thought ; “ what is my life worth, that 
I cling to it like this ?” 

An interval passed, and she felt her strength returning. She 
raised herself on her knees, and hid her face on the bed. She tried 
to pray — to pray to be forgiven for seeking the refuge of death. 
Frantic words burst from her lips — w T ords which would have risen 
to cries, if she had not stifled them in the bed-clothes. She started 
to her feet ; despair strengthened her with a headlong fury against 
herself. In one moment she was back at the table ; in another, the 
poison was once more in her hand. 

She removed the cork and lifted the bottle to her mouth. 

At the first cold touch of the glass on her lips, her strong young 
life leaped up in her leaping blood, and fought with the whole 
frenzy of its loathing against the close terror of Death. Every act- 
ive power in the exuberant vital force that was in her rose in re- 
volt against the destruction which her own will would fain have 
wreaked on her own life. She paused : for the second time, she 
paused in spite of herself. There, in the glorious perfection of her 
youth and health — there, trembling on the verge of human exist- 
ence, she stood ; with the kiss of the Destroyer close at her lips, and 
Nature, faithful to its sacred trust, fighting for the salvation of her 
to the last. 

No word passed her lips. Her cheeks flushed deep ; her breath 
came thick and fast. With the poison still in her hand, with the 
sense that she might faint in another moment, she made for the 
window, and threw back the curtain that covered it. 

The new day had risen. The broad gray dawn flowed in on her, 
over the quiet eastern sea. 

She saw the waters heaving, large and silent, in the misty calm : 
she felt the fresh breath of the morning flutter cool on her face. 
Her strength returned ; her mind cleared a little. At the sight of 


NO NAME. 


417 


the sea, her memory recalled the walk in the garden overnight, and 
the picture which her distempered fancy had painted on the black 
void. In thought, she saw the picture again — the murderer hurl- 
ing the Spud of the plow into the air, and setting the life or death 
of the woman who had deserted him on the hazard of the falling 
point. The infection of that terrible superstition seized on her 
mind as suddenly as the new day had burst on her view. The 
promise of release which she saw in it from the horror of her own 
hesitation roused the last energies of her despair. She resolved to 
end the struggle by setting her life or death on the hazard of a 
chance. 

On what chance ? 

The sea showed it to her. Dimly distinguishable through the 
mist, she saw a little fleet of coasting-vessels slowly drifting toward 
the house, all following the same direction with the favoring set of 
the tide. In half an hour — perhaps in less — the fleet would have 
passed her window. The hands of her watch pointed to four 
o’clock. She seated herself close at the side of the window, with 
her back toward the quarter from which the vessels were drifting 
down on her — with the poison placed on the window-sill, and the 
watch on her lap. For one half-hour to come she determined to 
wait there and count the vessels as they went by. If in that time 
an even number passed her, the sign given should be a sign to live. 
If the uneven number prevailed, the end should be Death. 

With that final resolution, she rested her head against the win- 
dow, and waited for the ships to pass. 

The first came, high, dark, and near in the mist, gliding silently 
over the silent sea. An interval — and the second followed, with 
the third close after it. Another interval, longer and longer drawn 
out — and nothing passed. She looked at her watch. Twelve min- 
utes, and three ships. Three. 

The fourth came, slower than the rest, larger than the rest, far- 
ther off in the mist than the rest. The interval followed ; a long 
interval once more. Then the next vessel passed, darkest and near- 
est of all. Five. The next uneven number — Five. 

She looked at her watch again. Nineteen minutes, and five ships. 
Twenty minutes. Twenty - one, two, three — and no sixth vessel. 
Twenty -four, and the sixth came by. Twenty -five, twenty -six, 
twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and the next uneven number — the fatal 
Seven — glided into view. Two minutes to the end of the half- 
hour. And seven ships. 

Twenty-nine, and nothing followed in the wake of the seventh 
ehip. The minute-hand of the watch moved on half-way to thirty, 
and still the white heaving sea was a misty blank. Without mov- 
ing her head from the window, she took the poison in one hand, 


418 


NO NAME. 


and raised the watch in the other. As the quick seconds counted 
each other out, her eyes, as quick as they, looked from the watch 
to the sea, from the sea to the watch — looked for the last time at 
the sea — and saw the Eighth ship. 

She never moved, she never spoke. The death of thought, the 
death of feeling, seemed to have come to her already. She put 
back the poison mechanically on the ledge of the window, and 
watched, as in a dream, the ship gliding smoothly on its silent way 
— gliding till it melted dimly into shadow — gliding till it was lost 
in the mist. 

The strain on her mind relaxed when the Messenger of Life had 
passed from her sight. 

“ Providence ?” she whispered faintly to herself. u Or chance ?” 

Her ey6s closed, and her head fell back. When the sense of life 
returned to her, the morning sun was warm on her face — the blue 
heaven looked down on her — and the sea was a sea of gold. 

She fell on her knees at the window and burst into tears. 
******* 

Toward noon that day, the captain, waiting below stairs, and 
hearing no movement in Magdalen’s room, felt uneasy at the long 
silence. He desired the new maid to follow him up stairs, and, 
pointing to the door, told her to go in softly, and see whether her 
mistress was awake. 

The maid entered the room, remained there a moment, and came 
out again, closing the door gently. 

“ She looks beautiful, sir,” said the girl ; “ and she’s sleeping as 
quietly as a new-born child.” 


CHAPTER XHL 

The morning of her husband’s return to North Shingles was a 
morning memorable forever in the domestic calendar of Mrs. Wragge. 
She dated from that occasion the first announcement which reached 
her of Magdalen’s marriage. 

It had been Mrs. Wragge’s earthly lot to pass her life in a state 
of perpetual surprise. Never yet, however, had she wandered in 
such a maze of astonishment as the maze in which she lost herself 
when the captain coolly told her the truth. She had been sharp 
enough to suspect Mr. Noel Yanstone of coming to the house in the 
character of a sweetheart on approval; and she had dimly in- 
terpreted certain expressions of impatience which had fallen from 
Magdalen’s lips, as boding ill for the success of his suit, but her ut* 
most penetration had never reached as far as a suspicion of the im* 


NO NAME. 


419 


pending marriage. She rose from one climax of amazement to an- 
other, as her husband proceeded with his disclosure. A wedding 
in the family at a day’s notice ! and that wedding Magdalen’s ! and 
not a single new dress ordered for any body, the bride included ! 
and the Oriental Cashmere Robe totally unavailable on the occasion 
when she might have worn it to the greatest advantage ! Mrs. 
Wragge dropped crookedly into a chair, and beat her disorderly 
hands on her unsymmetrical knees, in utter forgetfulness of the cap- 
tain’s presence and the captain’s terrible eye. It would not have 
surprised her to hear that the world had come to an end, and that 
the only mortal whom Destiny had overlooked, in winding up the 
affairs of this earthly planet, was herself ! 

Leaving his wife to recover her composure by her own unaided 
efforts, Captain Wragge withdrew to wait for Magdalen’s appear- 
ance in the lower regions of the house. It was close on one o’clock 
before the sound of footsteps in the room above warned him that 
she was awake and stirring. He called at once for the maid (whose 
name he had ascertained to be Louisa), and sent her up stairs to her 
mistress for the second time. 

Magdalen was standing by her dressing-table, when a faint tap at 
the door suddenly roused her. The tap was followed by the sound 
of a meek voice, which announced itself as the voice of “ her maid,” 
and inquired if Miss Bygrave needed any assistance that morning. 

“ Not at present,” said Magdalen, as soon as she had recovered 
the surprise of finding herself unexpectedly provided with an at- 
tendant. “ I will ring when I want you.” 

After dismissing the woman with that answer, she accidentally 
looked from the door to the window. Any speculations on the 
subject of the new servant in which she might otherwise have en • 
gaged were instantly suspended by the sight of the bottle of lauda- 
num, still standing on the ledge of the window, where she had left 
it at sunrise. She took it once more in her hand, with a strange 
confusion of feeling — with a vague doubt even yet, whether the 
sight of it reminded her of a terrible reality or a terrible dream. 
Her first impulse was to rid herself of it on the spot. She raised 
the bottle to throw the contents out of the window, and paused, in 
sudden distrust of the impulse that had come to her. “ I have ac- 
cepted my new life,” she thought. “ How do I know what that life 
may have in store for me ?” She turned from the window, and 
went back to the table. “ I may be forced to drink it yet,” she said, 
and put the laudanum into her dressing-case. 

Her mind was not at ease when she had done this : there seemed 
to be some indefinable ingratitude in the act. Still she made no 
attempt to remove the bottle from its hiding-place. She hurried on 
her toilet ; she hastened the time when she could ring for the maid, 


420 


NO NAME. 


and forget herself and her waking thoughts in a new subject. After 
touching the bell, she took from the table her letter to Norah and 
her letter to the captain, put them both into her dressing-case with 
the laudanum, and locked it securely with the key which she kept 
attached to her watch-chain. 

Magdalen’s first impression of her attendant was not an agreeable 
one. She could not investigate the girl with the experienced eye 
of the landlady at the London hotel, who had characterized the 
stranger as a young person overtaken by misfortune, and who had 
showed plainly, by her look and manner, of what nature she suspect- 
ed that misfortune to be. But with this drawback, Magdalen was 
perfectly competent to detect the tokens of sickness and sorrow 
lurking under the surface of the new maid’s activity and politeness. 
She suspected the girl was ill-tempered ; she disliked her name ; 
and she was indisposed to welcome any servant who had been en- 
gaged by Noel Yanstone. But after the first few minutes, “ Louisa ” 
grew on her liking. She answered all the questions put to her 
with perfect directness ; she appeared to understand her duties 
thoroughly; and she never spoke until she was spoken to first. 
After making all the inquiries that occurred to her at the time, and 
after determining to give the maid a fair trial, Magdalen rose to 
leave the room. The very air in it was still heavy to her with the 
oppression of the past night. 

“ Have you any thing more to say to me ?” she asked, turning to 
the servant, with her hand on the door. 

“ I beg your pardon, Miss,” said Louisa, very respectfully and 
very quietly. “ I think my master told me that the marriage was 
to be to-morrow ?” 

Magdalen repressed the shudder that stole over her at that refer- 
ence to the marriage on the lips of a stranger, and answered in the 
affirmative. 

“ It’s a very short time, Miss, to prepare in. If you would be so 
kind as to give me my orders about the packing before you go down 
stairs — ?” 

“ There are no such preparations to make as you suppose,” said 
Magdalen, hastily. “ The few things I have here can be all packed 
at once, if you like. I shall wear the same dress to-morrow which 
I have on to-day. Leave out the straw bonnet and the light shawl, 
and put every thing else into my boxes. I have no new dresses to 
pack ; I have nothing ordered for the occasion of any sort.” She 
tried to add some commonplace phrases of explanation, accounting 
as probably as might be for the absence of the usual wedding outfit 
and wedding-dress. But no further reference to the marriage 
would pass her lips, and without another word she abruptly left 
the room. 


NO NAME. 


421 


The meek and melancholy Louisa stood lost in astonishment. 
u Something wrong here,” she thought. “ I’m half afraid of my 
new place already.” She sighed resignedly, shook her head, and 
went to the wardrobe. She first examined the drawers underneath, 
took out the various articles of linen laid inside, and placed them on 
chairs. Opening the upper part of the wardrobe next, she ranged 
the dresses in it side by side on the bed. Her last proceeding was 
to push the empty boxes into the middle of the room, and to com- 
pare the space at her disposal with the articles of dress which she 
had to pack. She completed her preliminary calculations with the 
ready self-reliance of a woman who thoroughly understood her busi- 
ness, and began the packing forthwith. Just as she had placed the 
first article of linen in the smaller box, the door of the room opened, 
and the house-servant, eager for gossip, came in. 

“ What do you want ?” asked Louisa, quietly. 

“ Did you ever hear of any thing like this !” said the house-serv- 
ant, entering on her subject immediately. 

“ Like what ?” 

“ Like this marriage, to be sure. You’re London bred, they tell 
me. Did you ever hear of a young lady being married without a 
single new thing to her back ? No wedding veil, and no wedding 
breakfast, and no wedding favors for the servants. It’s flying in 
the face of Providence — that’s what I say. I’m only a poor servant, 
I know. But it’s wicked, downright wicked — and I don’t care 
who hears me !” 

Louisa went on with the packing. 

“ Look at her dresses !” persisted the house-servant, waving her 
hand indignantly at the bed. “ I’m only a poor girl, but I wouldn’t 
marry the best man alive without a new gown to my back. Look 
here ! look at this dowdy brown thing here. Alpaca ! You’re not 
going to pack this Alpaca thing, are you ? Why, it’s hardly fit for 
a servant ! I don’t know that I’d take a gift of it if it was offered 
me. It would do for me if I took it up in the skirt, and let it out 
in the waist — and it wouldn’t look so bad with a bit of bright trim- 
ming, would it ?” 

“ Let that dress alone, if you please,” said Louisa, as quietly as 
ever. 

“ What did you say ?” inquired the other, doubting whether her 
ears had not deceived her. 

“ I said, let that dress alone. It belongs to my mistress, and I 
have my mistress’s orders to pack up every thing in the room. You 
are not helping me by coming here — you are very much in my way.” 

“Well!” said the house - servant, “you may be London bred, as 
they say. But if these are your London manners, give me Suffolk !” 
She opened the door with an angry snatch at the handle, shut it 


422 


NO NAME. 


violently, opened it again, and looked in. “ Give me Suffolk !” said 
the house-servant, with a parting nod of her head to point the edge 
of her sarcasm. 

Louisa proceeded impenetrably with her packing up. 

Having neatly disposed of the linen in the smaller box, she turned 
her attention to the dresses next. After passing them carefully in 
review, to ascertain which was the least valuable of the collection, 
and to place that one at the bottom of the trunk for the rest to lie 
on, she made her choice with very little difficulty. The first gown 
which she put into the box was — the brown Alpaca dress. 

Meanwhile Magdalen had joined the captain down stairs. Al- 
though he could not fail to notice the languor in her face and the 
listlessness of all her movements, he was relieved to find that she 
met him with perfect composure. She was even self-possessed 
enough to ask him for news of his journey, with no other signs of 
agitation than a passing change of color and a little trembling of 
the lips. 

“ So much for the past,” said Captain Wragge, when his narra- 
tive of the expedition to London by way of St. Crux had come to 
an end. “ Now for the present. The bridegroom — ” 

“ If it makes no difference,” she interposed, “ call him Mr. Noel 
Yanstone.” 

“ With all my heart. Mr. Noel Yanstone is coming here this af- 
ternoon to dine and spend the evening. He w T ill be tiresome in the 
last degree ; but, like all tiresome people, he is not to be got rid of 
on any terms. Before he comes, I have a last word or two of cau- 
tion for your private ear. By this time to-morrow we shall have 
parted — without any certain knowledge, on either side, of our ever 
meeting again. I am anxious to serve your interests faithfully to 
the last ; I am anxious you should feel that I have done all I could 
for your future security when we say good-bye.” 

Magdalen looked at him in surprise. He spoke in altered tones. 
He was agitated; he was strangely in earnest. Something in his 
look and manner took her memory back to the first night at Aid- 
borough, when she had opened her mind to him in the darkening 
solitude — when they two had sat together alone on the slope of the 
martello tower. 

“ I have no reason to think otherwise than kindly of you,” she said. 

Captain Wragge suddenly left his chair, and took a turn back- 
ward and forward in the room. Magdalen’s last words seemed to 
have produced some extraordinary disturbance in him. 

“Damn it!” he broke out; “I can’t let you say that. You have 
reason to think ill of me. I have cheated you. You never got 
your fair shair of profit from the Entertainment, from first to last. 
There j now the murder’s out J” 


NO NAME. 


423 


Magdalen smiled, and signed to him to come back to his chair. 

“I know you cheated me,” she said, quietly. “You were in the 
exercise of your profession, Captain Wragge. I expected it when I 
joined you. I made no complaint at the time, and I make none 
now. If the money you took is any recompense for all the trouble 
I have given you, you are heartily welcome to it.” 

“ Will you shake hands on that ?” asked the captain, with an 
awkwardness and hesitation strongly at variance with his custom- 
ary ease of manner. 

Magdalen gave him her hand. He wrung it hard. “ You are a 
strange girl,” he said, trying to speak lightly. “ You have laid a 
hold on me that I don’t quite understand. I’m half uncomfortable 
at taking the money from you now ; and yet you don’t want it, do 
you ?” He hesitated. “ I almost wish,” he said, “ I had never met 
you on the Walls of York.” 

“It is too late to wish that, Captain Wragge. Say no more. 
You only distress me — say no more. We have other subjects to 
talk about. What were those words of caution which you had for 
my private ear ?” 

The captain took another turn in the room, and struggled back 
again into his every-day character. He produced from his pocket- 
book Mrs. Lecount’s letter to her master, and handed it to Magdalen. 

“ There is the letter that might have ruined us, if it had ever 
reached its address,” he said. “ Read it carefully. I have a ques- 
tion to ask you when you have done.” 

Magdalen read the letter. “ What is this proof,” she inquired, 
“ which Mrs. Lecount relies on so confidently ?” 

“ The very question I was going to ask you,” said Captain 
Wragge. “Consult your memory of what happened when you 
tried that experiment in Yauxhall Walk. Did Mrs. Lecount get 
no other chance against you than the chances you have told me of 
already ?” 

“ She discovered that my face was disguised, and she heard me 
speak in my own voice.” 

“And nothing more ?” 

“ Nothing more.” 

“ Very good. Then my interpretation of the letter is clearly the 
right one. The proof Mrs. Lecount relies on is my wife’s infernal 
ghost story — which is, in plain English, the story of Miss By grave 
having been seen in Miss Yanstone’s disguise; the witness being 
the very person who is afterward presented at Aldborough in the 
character of Miss Bygrave’s aunt. An excellent chance for Mrs. 
Lecount, if she can only lay her hand at the right time on Mrs. 
Wragge, and no chance at all, if she can’t. Make your mind easy 
op that point. Mrs. Lecount and my wife have seen the last of each 


424 


NO NAME. 


other. In the mean time, don’t neglect the warning I give you, iu 
giving you this letter. Tear it up, for fear of accidents, but don’t 
forget it.” 

“ Trust me to remember it,” replied Magdalen, destroying the let- 
ter while she spoke. “ Have you any thing more to tell me ?” 

“I have some information to give you,” said Captain Wragge, 
“ which may be useful, because it relates to your future security. 
Mind, I want to know nothing about your proceedings when to- 
morrow is over ; we settled that when we first discussed this mat- 
ter. I ask no questions, and I make no guesses. All I want to do 
now is to warn you of your legal position after your marriage, and 
to leave you to make what use you please of your knowledge, at 
your own sole discretion. I took a lawyer’s opinion on the point 
when I was in London, thinking it might be useful to you.” 

“ It is sure to be useful. What did the lawyer say ?” 

“ To put it plainly, this is what he said. If Mr. Noel Vanstone 
ever discovers that you have knowingly married him under a false 
name, he can apply to the Ecclesiastical Court to have his marriage 
declared null and void. The issue of the application would rest 
with the judges. But if he could prove that he had been intention- 
ally deceived, the legal opinion is that his case would be a strong 
one.” 

“ Suppose I chose to apply on my side ?” said Magdalen, eagerly. 
“ What then ?” 

“You might make the application,” replied the captain. “But 
remember one thing — you would come into Court with the acknowl- 
edgment of your own deception. I leave you to imagine what the 
judges would think of that.” 

“ Did the lawyer tell you any thing else ?” 

“ One thing besides,” said Captain Wragge. “ Whatever the law 
might do with the marriage in the lifetime of both the parties to it 
— on the death of either one of them, no application made by the 
survivor would avail ; and, as to the case of that survivor, the mar- 
riage would remain valid. You understand? If he dies, or if you 
die — and if no application has been made to the Court — he the sur- 
vivor, or you the survivor, would have no power of disputing the 
marriage. But in the lifetime of both of you, if he claimed to have 
the marriage dissolved, the chances are all in favor of his carrying 
his point.” 

He looked at Magdalen with a furtive curiosity as he said those 
words. She turned her head aside, absently tying her watch-chain 
into a loop and untying it again, evidently thinking with the clos- 
est attention over what he had last said to her. Captain Wragge 
walked uneasily to the window and looked out. The first object 
that caught his eye was Mr. Noel Vanstone approaching from Sea 


NO NAME. 


425 


View. He returned instantly to his former place m the room, and 
addressed himself to Magdalen once more. 

“Here is Mr. Noel Vanstone,” he said. “ One last caution before 
he comes in. Be on your guard with him about your age. He put 
the question to me before he got the License. I took the shortest 
way out of the difficulty, and told him you were twenty-one, and he 
made the declaration accordingly. Never mind about me; after 
to-morrow I am invisible. But, in your own interests, don’t forget, 
if the subject turns up, that you were of age when you married 
There is nothing more. You are provided with every necessary 
warning that I can give you. Whatever happens in the future, re- 
member I have done my best.” 

He hurried to the door without waiting for an answer, and went 
out into the garden to receive his guest. 

Noel Vanstone made his appearance at the gate, solemnly carrying 
his bridal offering to North Shingles with both hands. The object 
in question was an ancient casket (one of his father’s bargains) ; in- 
side the casket reposed an old-fashioned carbuncle brooch, set in 
silver (another of his father’s bargains) — bridal presents both, pos- 
sessing the inestimable merit of leaving his money undisturbed in 
his pocket. He shook his head portentously when the captain in- 
quired after his health and spirits. He had passed a wakeful night ; 
ungovernable apprehensions of Lecount’s sudden re-appearance had 
beset him as soon as he found himself alone at Sea View. Sea View 
was redolent of Lecount : Sea View (though built on piles, and the 
strongest house in England) was henceforth odious to him. He 
had felt this all night ; he had also felt his responsibilities. There 
was the lady’s maid, to begin with. Now he had hired her, he be- 
gan to think she wouldn’t do. She might fall sick on his hands; 
she might have deceived him by a false character; she and the 
landlady of the hotel might have been in league together. Horrible ! 
Really horrible to think of. Then there was the other responsibil- 
ity — perhaps the heaviest of the two — the responsibility of deciding 
where he was to go and spend his honey-moon to-morrow. He 
would have preferred one of his father’s empty houses. But except 
at Vauxhall Walk (which he supposed would be objected to), and 
at Aldborough (which was of course out of the question), all the 
houses were let. He would put himself in Mr. Bygrave’s hands. 
Where had Mr. Bygrave spent his own honey-moon? Given the 
British Islands to choose from, where would Mr. Bygrave pitch his 
tent, on a careful review of all the circumstances ? 

At this point the bridegroom’s questions suddenly came to an 
end, and the bridegroom’s face exhibited an expression of ungov- 
ernable astonishment. His judicious friend, whose advice had been 
at his disposal in every other emergency, suddenly turned round on 


426 


NO NAME. 


him, in the emergency of the honey-moon, and flatly declined dis- 
cussing the subject. 

“ No !” said the captain, as Noel Vanstone opened his lips to 
plead for a hearing, “ you must really excuse me. My point of view 
in this matter is, as usual, a peculiar one. For some time past I 
have been living in an atmosphere of deception, to suit your con- 
venience. That atmosphere, my good sir, is getting close; my 
Moral Being requires ventilation. Settle the choice of a locality 
with my niece, and leave me, at my particular request, in total igno- 
rance of the subject. Mrs. Lecount is certain to come here on her 
return from Zurich, and is certain to ask me where you are gone. 
You may think it strange, Mr. Vanstone ; but when I tell her I don’t 
know, I wish to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of feeling, for once 
in a way, that I am speaking the truth !” 

With those words, he opened the sitting-room door, introduced 
Noel Vanstone to Magdalen’s presence, bowed himself out of the 
room again, and set forth alone to while away the rest of the after- 
noon by taking a walk. His face showed plain tokens of anxiety, 
and his party-colored eyes looked hither and thither distrustfully, 
as he sauntered along the shore. “ The time hangs heavy on our 
hands,” thought the captain. “ I wish to-morrow was come and 
gone.” 

The day passed, and nothing happened ; the evening and the 
night followed, placidly and uneventfully. Monday came, a cloud- 
less, lovely day ; Monday confirmed the captain’s assertion that the 
marriage was a certainty. Toward ten o’clock, the clerk, ascending 
the church steps, quoted the old proverb to the pew-opener, meeting 
him under the porch : “ Happy the bride on whom the sun shines !” 

In a quarter of an hour more the wedding-party was in the vestry, 
and the clergyman led the way to the altar. Carefully as the secret 
of the marriage had been kept, the opening of the church in the 
morning had been enough to betray it. A small congregation, al- 
most entirely composed of women, were scattered here and there 
among the pews. Kirke’s sister and her children were staying with 
a friend at Aldborough, and Kirke’s sister was one of the congre- 
gation. 

As the wedding-party entered the church, the haunting terror of 
Mrs. Lecount spread from Noel Vanstone to the captain. For the 
first few minutes, the eyes of both of them looked among the wom- 
en in the pews with the same searching scrutiny, and looked away 
again with the same sense of relief. The clergyman noticed that ' 
look, and investigated the License more closely than usual. The 
clerk began to doubt privately whether the old proverb about the 
bride was a proverb to be always depended on. The female mem- 


NO NAME. 


427 


bers of the congregation murmured among themselves at the inexcus- 
able disregard of appearances implied in the bride’s dress. Kirke’s 
sister whispered venomously in her friend’s ear, “ Thank God for to- 
day for Robert’s sake.” Mrs. Wragge cried silently, with the dread 
of some threatening calamity she knew not what. The one person 
present who remained outwardly undisturbed was Magdalen herself. 
She stood, with tearless resignation, in her place before the altar-^ 
stood, as if all the sources of human emotion were frozen up within 
her. 

The clergyman opened the Book. 

****** * 

It was done. The awful words which speak from earth to Heav- 
en were pronounced. The children of the two dead brothers — in- 
heritors of the implacable enmity which had parted their parents — 
were Man and Wife. 

From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to 
4he parting scene. They were back at the house while the words 
of the Marriage Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before 
they had been five minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the 
garden gate. In a minute more the opportunity came for which 
Magdalen and the captain had been on the watch — the opportunity 
of speaking together in private for the last time. She still pre- 
served her icy resignation ; she seemed beyond all reach now of 
the fear that had once mastered her, of the remorse that had once 
tortured her to the soul. With a firm hand she gave him the prom- 
ised money. With a firm face she looked her last at him. “ I’m 
not to blame,” he whispered, eagerly ; “ I have only done what you 
asked me.” She bowed her head ; she bent it toward him kindly, 
and let him touch her forehead with his lips. “ Take care !” he said. 
“ My last words are — for God’s sake take care when I’m gone !” 
She turned from him with a smile, and spoke her farewell words to 
his wife. Mrs. Wragge tried hard to face her loss bravely — the loss 
of the friend whose presence had fallen like light from Heaven over 
the dim pathway of her life. “ You have been very good to me, my 
dear ; I thank you kindly ; I thank you with all my heart.” She 
could say no more ; she clung to Magdalen in a passion of tears, as 
her mother might have clung to her, if her mother had lived to see 
that horrible day. “ I’m frightened for you !” cried the poor crea- 
ture, in a wild, wailing voice. “ Oh, my darling, I’m frightened for 
you !” Magdalen desperately drew herself free — kissed her — and 
hurried out to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, 
the cry of that guileless love, shook her as nothing else had shaken 
her that day. It was a refuge to get to the carriage — a refuge, though 
the man she had married stood there waiting for her at the door. 

Mrs. Wragge tried to follow her into the garden. But the cap- 


428 


NO NAME. 


tain had seen Magdalen’s face as she ran out, and he steadily held 
his wife back in the passage. From that distance the last farewells 
were exchanged. As long as the carriage was in sight, Magdalen 
looked back at them ; she waved her handkerchief as she turned 
the corner. In a moment more the last thread which bound her 
to them was broken ; the familiar companionship of many months 
was a thing of the past already ! 

Captain Wragge closed the house door on the idlers who were 
looking in from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting- 
room, and spoke to her with a forbearance which she had never yet 
experienced from him. 

“ She has gone her way,” he said, “ and in another hour we shall 
have gone ours. Cry your cry out — I don’t deny she’s worth crying 
for.” 

Even then — even when the dread of Magdalen’s future was at its 
darkest in his mind — the ruling habit of the man’s life clung to him. 
Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch-box. Mechanically he open- 
ed his Book of Accounts, and made the closing entry — the entry of 
his last transaction with Magdalen — in black and white. “ By Rec d 
from Miss Vanstone,” wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, “ Two 
hundred pounds.” 

“You won’t be angry with me ?” said Mrs. Wragge, looking tim- 
idly at her husband through her tears. “ I want a word of comfort, 
captain. Oh, do tell me, when shall I see her again ?” 

The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable 
word : 

“ Never !” 

Between eleven and twelve o’clock that night Mrs. Lecount drove 
into Zurich. 

Her brother’s house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. 
With some difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held 
up her hands in speechless amazement when she opened the door 
and saw who the visitor was. 

“ Is my brother alive ?” asked Mrs. Lecount, entering the house. 

“ Alive !” echoed the servant. “ He has gone holiday-making into 
the country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air.” 

The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. 
The coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was 
livid, and her teeth chattered in her head. 

“ Send for my brother’s doctor,” she said, as soon as she could 
speak. 

The doctor came. She handed him a letter before he could say 
a word. 

“ Did you write that letter ?” 


NO NAME. 


429 


He looked it over rapidly, and answered her without hesitation, 

“ Certainly not !” 

“ It is your handwriting.” 

“ It is a forgery of my handwriting.” 

She rose from the chair with a new strength in her. 

“ When does the return mail start for Paris ?” she asked. 

“ In half an hour.” 

“ Send instantly and take me a place in it !” 

The servant hesitated, the doctor protested. She turned a deaf 
ear to them both. 

“ Send !” she reiterated, M or I will go myself.” 

They obeyed. The servant went to take the place : the doctor 
remained, and held a conversation with Mrs. Lecount. When the 
half-hour had passed, he helped her into her place in the mail, and 
charged the conductor privately to take care of his passenger. 

“ She has traveled from England without stopping,” said the 
doctor ; “ and she is traveling back again without rest. Be careful 
of her, or she will break down under the double journey.” 

The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an 
end Mrs. Lecount was on her way back to England. 

THE END OF THE FOURTH SCENE. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 


I. 

From George Bartram to Noel Vanstone. 

“ St. Crux, September 4th, 1847. 

“ My dear Noel, — Here are two plain questions at starting. In 
the name of all that is mysterious, what are you hiding for? And 
why is every thing relating to your marriage kept an impenetrable 
secret from your oldest friends ? 

“ I have been to Aldborough to try if I could trace you from that 
place, and have come back as wise as I went. I have applied to 
your lawyer in London, and have been told, in reply, that you have 
forbidden him to disclose the place of your retreat to any one with- 
out first receiving your permission to do so. All I could prevail on 
him to say was, that he would forward any letter which might be 
sent to his care. I write accordingly, and, mind this, I expect an 
answer. 


430 


NO NAME. 


“ Yon may ask, in your ill-tempered way, what business 1 have to 
meddle with affairs of yours which it is your pleasure to keep pri- 
vate. My dear Noel, there is a serious reason for our opening com- 
munications with you from this house. You don’t know what events 
have taken place at St. Crux since you ran away to get married; 
and though I detest writing letters, I must lose an hour’s shoot- 
ing to-day in trying to enlighten you. 

“ On the twenty-third of last month, the admiral and I were dis- 
turbed over our wine after dinner by the announcement that a vis- 
itor had unexpectedly arrived at St. Crux. Who do you think the 
visitor was ?* Mrs. Lecount ! 

“ My uncle, with that old - fashioned bachelor gallantry of his 
which pays equal respect to all wearers of petticoats, left the table 
directly to welcome Mrs. Lecount. While I was debating whether 
I should follow him or not, my meditations were suddenly brought 
to an end by a loud call from the admiral. I ran into the morning- 
room, and there was your unfortunate housekeeper on the sofa, 
with all the women-servants about her, more dead than alive. She 
had traveled from England to Zurich, and from Zurich back again 
to England, without stopping ; and she looked, seriously and liter- 
.ally, at death’s door. I immediately agreed with my uncle that the 
first thing to be done was to send for medical help. We dispatched 
a groom on the spot, and, at Mrs. Lecount’s own request, sent all the 
servants in a body out of the room. 

“ As soon as we were alone, Mrs. Lecount surprised us by a singu- 
lar question. She asked if you had received a letter which she had 
addressed to you before leaving England at this house. When we 
told her that the letter had been forwarded, under cover to your 
friend Mr. Bygrave, by your own particular request, she turned as 
pale as ashes; and when we added that you had left us in company 
with this same Mr. Bygrave, she clasped her hands and stared at us 
as if she had taken leave of her senses. Her next question was, 
‘Where is Mr. Noel now?’ We could only give her one reply — Mr. 
Noel had not informed us. She looked perfectly thunderstruck at 
that answer. ‘ He has gone to his ruin V she said. ‘ He has gone 
away in company with the greatest villain in England. I must find 
him ! I tell you, I must find Mr. Noel ! If I don’t find him at once, 
it will be too late. He will be married !’ she burst out quite frantic- 
ally. ‘ On my honor and my oath, he will be married !’ The ad- 
miral, incautiously perhaps, but with the best intentions, told her 
you. were married already. She gave a scream that made the win- 
dows ring again, and dropped back on the sofa in a fainting-fit. 
The doctor came in the nick of time, and soon brought her to. 
But she was taken ill the same night ; she has grown worse and 
worse ever since; and the last medical report is, that the fever 


NO NAME. 


431 


irom which she has been suffering is in a fair way to settle on her 
Drain , 

“ Now, my dear Noel, neither my uncle nor I have any wish to in- 
trude ourselves on your confidence. We are naturally astonished at 
the extraordinary mystery which hangs over you and your marriage, 
and we can not be blind to the fact that your housekeeper has, 
apparently, some strong reason of her own for viewing Mrs. Noel 
Yanstone with an enmity and distrust which we are quite ready to 
believe that lady has done nothing to deserve. Whatever strange 
misunderstanding there may have been in your household, is your 
business (if you choose to keep it to yourself), and not* ours. All 
we have any right to do is to tell you what the doctor says. His 
patient has been delirious ; he declines to answer for her life if she 
goes on as she is going on now ; and he thinks — finding that she is 
perpetually talking of her master — that your presence would be use- 
ful in quieting her, if you could come here at once, and exert your 
influence before it is too late. 

“What do you say? Will you emerge from the darkness that 
surrounds you and come to St. Crux ? If this was the case of an 
ordinary servant, I could understand your hesitating to leave the 
delights of your honey-moon for any such object as is here proposed 
to you. But, my dear fellow, Mrs. Lecount in not an ordinary serv- 
ant. You are under obligations to her fidelity and attachment in 
your father’s time, as well as in your own ; and if you can quiet the 
anxieties which seem to be driving this unfortunate woman mad, I 
really think you ought to come here and do so. Your leaving Mrs. 
Noel Yanstone is of course out of the question. There is no neces- 
sity for any such hard-hearted proceeding. The admiral desires 
me to remind you that he is your oldest friend living, and that his 
house is at your wife’s disposal, as it has always been at yours. In 
this great rambling-place she need dread no near association with 
the sick-room ; and, with all my uncle’s oddities, I am sure she will 
not think the offer of his friendship an offer to be despised. 

“ Have I told you already that I went to Aldborough to try and 
find a clue to your whereabouts ? I can’t be at the trouble of look- 
ing back to see ; so, if I have told you, I tell you again. The truth 
is, I made an acquaintance at Aldborough of whom you know some- 
thing — at least by report. 

“ After applying vainly at Sea Yiew, I went to the hotel to in- 
quire about you. The landlady could give me no information ; but 
the moment I mentioned your name, she asked if I was related to 
you; and when I told her I was your cousin, she said there was a 
young lady then at the hotel whose name was Vanstone also, who 
was in great distress about a missing relative, and who might prove 
of some use to me — or I to her — if we knew of each other’s errand 


432 


NO NAME. 


at Aldborough. I had not the least idea who she was, but I sen* in 
my card at a venture; and in five minutes afterward I found mvseif 
in the presence of one of the most charming women these eyes ever 
looked on. 

“ Our first words of explanation informed me that my family 
name was known to her by repute. Who do you think she was ? 
The eldest daughter of my uncle and yours — Andrew Vanstone. I 
had often heard my poor mother in past years speak of her brother 
Andrew, and I knew of that sad story at Combe-Raven. But our 
families, as you are aware, had always been estranged, and I had 
never seen my charming cousin before. She has the dark eyes and 
hair, and the gentle retiring manners that I always admire in a 
woman. I don’t want to renew our old disagreement about your 
father’s conduct to those two sisters, or to deny that his brother 
Andrew may have behaved badly to him ; I am willing to admit 
that the high moral position he took in the matter is quite unas- 
sailable by such a miserable sinner as I am ; and I will not dispute 
that my own spendthrift habits incapacitate me from offering any 
opinion on the conduct of other people’s pecuniary affairs. But, 
with all these allowances and drawbacks, I can tell you one thing, 
Noel. If you ever see the elder Miss Vanstone, I venture to proph- 
esy that, for the first time in your life, you will doubt the propriety 
of following your father’s example. 

“ She told me her little story, poor thing, most simply and unaf- 
fectedly. She is now occupying her second situation as a governess 
— and, as usual, I, who know every body, know the family. They 
are friends of my uncle’s, whom he has lost sight of latterly — the 
Tyrrels of Portland Place — and they treat Miss Vanstone with as 
much kindness and consideration as if she was a member of the 
family. One of their old servants accompanied her to Aldborough, 
her object in traveling to that place being what the landlady of the 
hotel had stated it to be. The family reverses have, it seems, had 
a serious effect on Miss Vanstone’s younger sister, who has left her 
friends, and who has been missing from home for some time. She 
had been last heard of at Aldborough ; and her elder sister, on her 
return from the Continent with the Tyrrels, had instantly set out to 
make inquiries at that place. 

“ This was all Miss Vanstone told me. She asked whether you 
had seen any thing of her sister, or whether Mrs. Lecount knew any 
thing of her sister — I suppose because she was aware you had been 
at Aldborough. Of course I could tell her nothing. She entered 
into no details on the subject, and I could not presume to ask her for 
any. All I did was to set to work with might and main to assist 
her inquiries. The attempt was an utter failure ; nobody could give 
us any information. We tried personal description of course ; and, 


NO NAME. 


433 


strange to say, the only young lady formerly staying at Aldborough 
who answered the description was, of all the people in the world, 
the lady you have married ! If she had not had an uncle and aunt 
(both of whom have left the place), I should have begun to suspect 
that you had married your cousin without knowing it ! Is this the 
clue to the mystery ? Don’t be angry; I must have my little joke, 
and I can’t help writing as carelessly as I talk. The end of it was, 
our inquiries were all baffled, and I traveled back with Miss Van- 
stone and her attendant as far as our station here. I think I shall 
call on the Tyrrels when I am next in London. I have certainly 
treated that family with the most inexcusable neglect. 

“ Here I am at the end of my third sheet of note-paper ! I don’t 
often take the pen in hand ; but when I do, you will agree with me 
that I am in no hurry to lay it aside again. Treat the rest of my 
letter as you like, but consider what I have told you about Mrs. Le* 
count, and remember that time is of consequence. 

“ Ever yours, George Bartram.” 


II. 

From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth. 

“ Portland Place. 

“ My dear Miss Garth, — More sorrow, more disappointment 1 
I have just returned from Aldborough, without making any discov- 
ery. Magdalen is still lost to us. 

i I can not attribute this new overthrow of my hopes to any want 
of perseverance or penetration in making the necessary inquiries. 
My inexperience in such matters was most kindly and unexpectedly 
assisted by Mr. George Bartram. By a strange coincidence, he hap^ 
pened to be at Aldborough, inquiring after Mr. Noel Vanstone, at 
the very time when I was there inquiring after Magdalen. He sent 
in his card, and knowing, when I looked at the name, that he was 
my cousin — if I may call him so — I thought there would be no im- 
propriety in my seeing him and asking his advice. I abstained from 
entering into particulars for Magdalen’s sake, and I made no allusion 
to that letter of Mrs. Lecount’s which you answered for me. I only 
told him Magdalen was missing, and had been last heard of at Ald- 
borough. The kindness which he showed in devoting himself to 
my assistance exceeds all description. He treated me, in my forlorn 
situation, with a delicacy and respect which I shall remember grate- 
fully long after he has himself perhaps forgotten our meeting alto- 
gether. He is quite young — not more than thirty, I should think. 
In face and figure, he reminded me a little of the portrait of my fa- 
ther at Combe-Raven — I mean the portrait in the dining-room, of 
my father when he was a young man. 


434 


NO NAME. 


tk Useless as our inquiries were, there is one result of them which 
lias left a very strange and shocking impression on my mind. 

“ It appears that Mr. Noel Yanstone has lately married, under 
mysterious circumstances, a young lady whom he met with at Aid' 
borough, named Bygrave. He has gone away with his wife, telling 
nobody but his lawyer where he has gone to. This I heard from 
Mr. George Bartram, who was endeavoring to trace him, for the 
purpose of communicating the news of his housekeeper’s serious 
illness — the housekeeper being the same Mrs. Lecount whose letter 
you answered. So far, you may say, there is nothing which need 
particularly interest either of us. But I think you will be as much 
surprised as I was when I tell you that the description given by the 
people at Aldborough of Miss Bygrave’s appearance is most start- 
lingly and unaccountably like the description of Magdalen’s ap- 
pearance. This discovery, taken in connection with all the circum- 
stances we know of, has had an effect on my mind which I can not 
describe to you — which I dare not realize to myself. Pray come 
and see me ! I have never felt so wretched about Magdalen as I 
feel now. Suspense must have weakened my nerves in some strange 
way. I feel superstitious about the slightest things. This acci- 
dental resemblance of a total stranger to Magdalen fills me every 
now and then with the most horrible misgivings — merely because 
Mr. Noel Yanstone’s name happens to be mixed up with it. Once 
more, pray come to me ; I have so much to say to you that I can 
not, and dare not, say in writing. 

“ Gratefully and affectionately yours, Norah.” 

III. 

From Mr. John Loscombe {Solicitor) to George Bartram , Esq. 

“ Lincoln’s Inn, London, September 6th, 1847. 

“ Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your note, inclosing a 
letter addressed to my client, Mr. Noel Vanstone, and requesting 
that I will forward the same to Mr. Yanstone’s present address. 

“ Since I last had the pleasure of communicating with you on this 
subject, my position toward my client is entirely altered. Three 
days ago I received a letter from him, which stated his intention of 
changing his place of residence on the next day then ensuing, but 
which left me entirely in ignorance on the subject of the locality to 
which it was his intention to remove. I have not heard from him 
since ; and, as he had previously drawn on me for a larger sum of 
money than usual, there would be no present necessity for his writ- 
ing to me again — assuming that it is his wish to keep his place of 
residence concealed from every one, myself included. 

“ Under these circumstances, I think it right to return you your 


NO NAME. 


435 


letter, with the assurance that I will let you know, if I happen to be 
again placed in a position to forward it to its destination. 

“ Your obedient servant, John Loscombe.” 

IV. 

From Norah Vanstone to Miss Garth. 

“Portland Place. 

“ My dear Miss Garth, — Forget the letter I wrote to you yes- 
terday, and all the gloomy forebodings that it contains. This morn- 
ing’s post has brought new life to me. I have just received a letter, 
addressed to me at your house, and forwarded here, in your absence 
from home yesterday, by your sister. Can you guess who the writer 
is ? — Magdalen ! 

“ The letter is very short ; it seems to have been written in a 
hurry. She says she has been dreaming of me for some nights past, 
and the dreams have made her fear that her long silence has caused 
me more distress on her account than she is worth. She writes, 
therefore, to assure me that she is safe and well — that she hopes to 
see me before long — and that she has something to tell me, when 
we meet, which will try my sisterly love for her as nothing has tried 
it yet. The letter is not dated ; but the postmark is ‘Allonby,’ which 
I have found, on referring to the Gazetteer, to be a little sea-side 
place in Cumberland. There is no hope of my being able to write 
back, for Magdalen expressly says that she is on the eve of depart- 
ure from her present residence, and that she is not at liberty to say 
where she is going to next, or to leave instructions for forwarding 
any letters after her. 

“ In happier times, I should have thought this letter very far from 
being a satisfactory one, and I should have been seriously alarmed 
by that allusion to a future confidence on her part which will try 
my love for her as nothing has tried it yet. But after all the sus- 
pense I have suffered, the happiness of seeing her handwriting 
again seems to fill my heart, and to keep all other feelings out of it. 
I don’t send you her letter, because I know you are coming to me 
soon, and I want to have the pleasure of seeing you read it. 

“ Ever affectionately yours, Norah. 

“ P.S. — Mr. George Bartram called on Mrs. Tyrrel to-day. He in- 
sisted on being introduced to the children. When he was gone, 
Mrs. Tyrrel laughed in her good-humored way, and said that his 
anxiety to see the children looked, to her mind, very much like an 
anxiety to see me. You may imagine how my spirits are improved 
when I can occupy my pen in writing such nonsense as this !” 


436 


NO NAME. 


V. 

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot, General Agent , London . 

“ St. Crux, October 23d, 1847. 

“ Dear Sir, — I have been long in thanking you for the kind let- 
ter which promises me your assistance, in friendly remembrance of 
the commercial relations formerly existing between my brother and 
yourself. The truth is, I have overtasked my strength on my recov- 
ery from a long and dangerous illness ; and for the last ten days I 
have been suffering under a relapse. I am now better again, and 
able to enter on the business which you so kindly offer to under- 
take for me. 

“ The person whose present place of abode* it is of the utmost im- 
portance to me to discover is Mr. Noel Yanstone. I have lived, for 
many years past, in this gentleman’s service as housekeeper ; and 
not having received my formal dismissal, I consider myself in his 
service still. During my absence on the Continent, he was private- 
ly married at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on the eighteenth of August 
last. He left Aldborough the same day, taking his wife with him 
to some place of retreat which was kept a secret from every body 
except his lawyer, Mr. Loscombe, of Lincoln’s Inn. After a short 
time he again removed, on the 4th of September, without informing 
Mr. Loscombe, on this occasion, of his new place of abode. From 
that date to this, the lawyer has remained (or has pretended to re- 
main) in total ignorance of where he now is. Application has been 
made to Mr. Loscombe, under the circumstances, to mention what 
that former place of residence was, of which Mr. Yanstone is known 
to have informed him. Mr. Loscombe has declined acceding to this 
request, for want of formal permission to disclose his client’s pro- 
ceedings after leaving Aldborough. I have all these latter particu- 
lars from Mr. Loscombe’s correspondent — the nephew of the gentle- 
man who owns this house, and whose charity has given me an asy- 
lum, during the heavy affliction of my sickness, under his own roof. 

“I believe the reasons which have induced Mr. Noel Yanstone to 
keep himself and his wife in hiding are reasons which relate entire- 
ly to myself. In the first place, he is aware that the circumstances 
under which he has married are such as to give me the right of re- 
garding him with a just indignation. In the second place, he knows 
that my faithful services, rendered through a period of twenty years, 
to his father and to himself, forbid him, in common decency, to cast 
me out helpless on the world without a provision for the end of my 
life. He is the meanest of living men, and his wife is the vilest of 
living women. As long as he can avoid fulfilling his obligations to 
me, he will ; and his wife’s encouragement may be trusted to fortify 
him in his ingratitude. 


NO NAME. 


437 


41 My object in determining to find him out is briefly this. His 
marriage has exposed him to consequences which a man of ten 
times his courage could not face without shrinking. Of those con- 
sequences he knows nothing. His wife knows, and keeps him in 
ignorance. I know, and can enlighten him. His security from the 
danger that threatens him is in my hands alone ; and he shall pay 
the price of his rescue to the last farthing of the debt that justice 
claims for me as my due — no more, and no less. 

“ I have now laid my mind before you, as you told me, without 
reserve. You know why I want to find this man, and what I mean 
to do when I find him. I leave it to your sympathy for me to 
answer the serious question that remains : How is the discovery to 
be made ? If a first trace of them can be found, after their departure 
from Aldborough, I believe careful inquiry will suffice for the rest. 
The personal appearance of the wife, and the extraordinary contrast 
between her husband and herself, are certain to be remarked, and 
remembered, by every stranger who sees them. 

“When you favor me with your answer, please address it to 
‘ Care of Admiral Bartram, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, near Ossory, Es- 
sex. Your much obliged, Virginie Lecount.” 


VI. 

From Mr . de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Dark’s Buildings, Kingsland, 

* Private and Confidential. “ October 25th, 1847. 

“ Dear Madam, — I hasten to reply to your favor of Saturday’s 
date. Circumstances have enabled me to forward your interests, by 
consulting a friend of mine possessing great experience in the man- 
agement of private inquiries of all sorts. I have placed your case 
before him (without mentioning names) ; and I am happy to inform 
you that my views and his views of the proper course to take agree 
in every particular. 

“ Both myself and friend, then, are of opinion that little or noth- 
ing can be done toward tracing the parties you mention, until the 
place of their temporary residence after they left Aldborough has 
been discovered first. If this can be done, the sooner it is done the 
better. Judging from your letter, some weeks must have passed 
since the lawyer received his information that they had shifted their 
quarters. As they are both remarkable-looking people, the strangers 
who may have assisted them on their travels have probably not for- 
gotten them yet. Nevertheless, expedition is desirable. 

“ The question for you to consider is, whether they may not pos- 
sibly have communicated the address of which we stand in need to 
some other person besides the lawyer. The husband may have 
written to members of his family, or the wife may have written to 


438 


NO NAME. 


members of her family. Both myself and friend are of opinion that 
the latter chance is the likeliest of the two. If you have any means 
of access in the direction of the wife’s family, we strongly recom- 
mend you to make use of them. If not, please supply us with the 
names of any of her near relations or intimate female friends whom 
you know, and we will endeavor to get access for you. 

u In any case, we request you will at once favor us with the most 
exact personal description that can be written of both the parties. 
We may require your assistance, in this important particular, at five 
minutes’ notice. Favor us, therefore, with the description by return 
of post. In the mean time, we will endeavor to ascertain on our 
side whether any information is to be privately obtained at Mr. Los- 
combe’s office. The lawyer himself is probably altogether beyond 
our reach. But if any one of his clerks can be advantageously 
treated with on such terms as may not overtax your pecuniary re- 
sources, accept my assurance that the opportunity shall be made 
the most of by, dear madam, your faithful servant, 

“Alfred de Bleriot.” 

VII. 

From Mr. Pendril to Norah Vanstone. 

“Serle Street, October 27th, 1847. 

“My dear Miss Vanstone, — A lady named Lecount (formerly 
attached to Mr. Noel Vanstone’s service in the capacity of house- 
keeper) has called at my office this morning, and has asked me to 
furnish her with your address. I have begged her to excuse my 
immediate compliance with her request, and to favor me with a call 
to-morrow morning, when I shall be prepared to meet her with a 
definite answer. 

“ My hesitation in this matter does not proceed from any distrust 
of Mrs. Lecount personally, for I know nothing whatever to her prej- 
udice. But in making her request to me, she stated that the object 
of the desired interview was to speak to you privately on the sub- 
ject of your sister. Forgive me for acknowledging that I deter- 
mined to withhold the address as soon as I heard this. You will 
make allowances for your old friend, and your sincere well-wisher ? 
You will not take it amiss if I express my strong disapproval of 
your allowing yourself, on any pretense whatever, to be mixed up 
for the future with your sister’s proceedings. 

“ I will not distress you by saying more than this. But I feel too 
deep an interest in your welfare, and too sincere an admiration of 
the patience with which you have borne all your trials, to say less. 

“ If I can not prevail on you to follow my advice, you have only 
to say so, and Mrs. Lecount shall have your address to-morrow. In 
this case (which I can not contemplate without the greatest unwill- 


NO NAME. 


439 


ingness), let me at least recommend you to stipulate that Miss Garth 
shall be present at the interview. In any matter with which your 
sister is concerned, you may want an old friend’s advice, and an old 
friend’s protection against your own generous impulses. If I could 
have helped you in this way, I would ; but Mrs. Lecount gave me 
indirectly to understand that the subject to be discussed was of too 
delicate a nature to permit of my presence. Whatever this objec- 
tion may be really worth, it can not apply to Miss Garth, who has 
brought you both up from childhood. I say, again, therefore, if you 
see Mrs. Lecount, see her in Miss Garth’s company. 

“Always most truly yours, William Pendril.” 

VIII. 

From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril. 

“Portland Place, Wednesday. 

“ Dear Mr. Pendril, — Pray don’t think I am ungrateful for your 
kindness. Indeed, indeed I am not ! But I must see Mrs. Lecount. 
You were not aware when you wrote to me that I had received a 
few lines from Magdalen — not telling me where she is, but holding 
out the hope of our meeting before long. Perhaps Mrs. Lecount 
may have something to say to me on this very subject. Even if it 
should not be so, my sister — do what she may — is still my sister. I 
oan’t desert her ; I can’t turn my back on any one who comes to 
me in her name. You know, dear Mr. Pendril, I have always been 
obstinate on this subject, and you have always borne with me. Let 
me owe another obligation to you which I can never return, and 
bear with me still ! 

“Need I say that I willingly accept that part of your advice 
which refers to Miss Garth ? I have already written to beg that 
she will come here at four to-morrow afternoon. When you see 
Mrs. Lecount, please inform her that Miss Garth will be with me, 
and that she will find us both ready to receive her here to-morrow 
at four o’clock. 

“ Gratefully yours, Norah Vanstone.” 

IX. 

From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount. 

“Private. “Dark’s Buildings, October 28th. 

“ Dear Madam, — One of Mr. Loscombe’s clerks has proved ame- 
nable to a small pecuniary consideration, and has mentioned a cir- 
cumstance which it may be of some importance to you to know. 

“Nearly a month since, accident gave the clerk in question an 
opportunity of looking into one of the documents on his master’s 
table, which had attracted his attention from a slight peculiarity in 
the form and color of the paper. He had only time, during Mr. 


440 


NO NAME. 


Loscombe’s momentary absence, to satisfy his curiosity by looking 
at the beginning of the document and at the end. At the begin- 
ning he saw the customary form used in making a will ; at the end 
he discovered the signature of Mr. Noel Yanstone, with the names 
of two attesting witnesses, and the date (of which he is quite cer- 
tain ) — the thirtieth of September last. 

“ Before the clerk had time to make any further investigations, 
his master returned, sorted the papers on the table, and carefully 
locked up the will in the strong-box devoted to the custody of Mr. 
Noel Yanstone’ s documents. It has been ascertained that, at the 
close of September, Mr. Loscombe was absent from the office. If he 
was then employed in superintending the execution of his client’s 
will — which is quite possible — it follows clearly that he was in the 
secret of Mr. Yanstone’s address after the removal of the 4th of Sep- 
tember ; and if you can do nothing on your side, it may be desira- 
ble to have the lawyer watched on ours. In any case, it is certainly 
ascertained that Mr. Noel Yanstone has made his will since his mar- 
riage. I leave you to draw your own conclusions from that fact, 
and remain, in the hope of hearing from you shortly, 

“ Your faithful servant, Alfred de Bleriot.” 


X. 

From Miss Oarth to Mr. Pendril. 

“ Portland Place, October 28 th. 

a My dear Sir, — Mrs. Lecount has just left us. If it was not too 
late to wish, I should wish, from the bottom of my heart, that Norah 
had taken your advice, and had refused to see her. 

“ I write in such distress of mind that I can not hope to give you 
a clear and complete account of the interview. I can only tell you 
briefly what Mrs. Lecount has done, and what our situation now is. 
The rest must be left until I am more composed, and until I can 
speak to you personally. 

“ You will remember my informing you of the letter which Mrs. 
Lecount addressed to Norah from Aldborough, and which I answer- 
ed for her in her absence. When Mrs. Lecount made her appear- 
ance to-day, her first words announced to us that she had come to 
renew the subject. As well as I can remember it, this is what she 
said, addressing herself to Norah : 

“ ‘ I wrote to you on the subject of your sister, Miss Yanstone, 
some little time since, and Miss Garth was so good as to answer the 
letter. What I feared at that time has come true. Your sister has 
defied all my efforts to check her ; she has disappeared in company 
with my master, Mr. Noel Yanstone; and she is now in a position 
of danger which may lead to her disgrace and ruin at a moments 
notice. It is my interest to recover my master, it is your interest to 


NO NAME. 


441 


save your sister. Tell me — for time is precious — have you any news 
of her ?’ 

44 Norah answered, as well as her terror and distress would allow 
her, 4 1 have had a letter, but there was no address on it.’ 

44 Mrs. Lecount asked, 4 Was there no postmark on the envelope?’ 

“Norah said, 4 Yes; Allonby.’ 

44 4 Allonby is better than nothing,’ said Mrs. Lecount. 4 Allonby 
may help you to trace her. Where is Allonby V 

44 Norah told her. It all passed in a minute. I had been too 
much confused and startled to interfere before, but I composed my- 
self sufficiently to interfere now. 

44 4 You have entered into no particulars,’ I said. 4 You have only 
frightened us — you have told us nothing.’ 

44 4 You shall hear the particulars, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Lecount ; 4 and 
you and Miss Yanstone shall judge for yourselves, if I have frighten- 
ed you without a cause.’ 

44 Upon this, she entered at once upon a long narrative, which I 
can not — I might almost say, which I dare not — repeat. You will 
understand the horror we both felt when I tell you the end. If Mrs. 
Lecount’s statement is to be relied on, Magdalen has carried her 
mad resolution of recovering her father’s fortune to the last and 
most desperate extremity — she has married Michael Yanstone’s son 
under a false name. Her husband is at this moment still persuaded 
that her maiden name was Bygrave, and that she is really the niece 
of a scoundrel who assisted her imposture, and whom I recognize, 
by the description of him, to have been Captain Wragge. 

44 1 spare you Mrs. Lecount’s cool avowal, when she rose to leave 
us, of her own mercenary motives in wishing to discover her master 
and to enlighten him. I spare you the hints she dropped of Mag- 
dalen’s purpose in contracting this infamous marriage. The one 
aim and object of my letter is to implore you to assist me in quiet- 
ing Norah’s anguish of mind. The shock she has received at hear- 
ing this news of her sister is not the worst result of what has hap- 
pened. She has persuaded herself that the answers she innocently 
gave, in her distress to Mrs. Lecount’s questions on the subject of 
her letter — the answers wrung from her under the sudden pressure 
of confusion and alarm — may be used to Magdalen’s prejudice by 
the woman who purposely startled her into giving the information. 
I can only prevent her from taking some desperate step on her side 
— some step by which she may forfeit the friendship and protection 
of the excellent people with whom she is now living — by reminding 
her that if Mrs. Lecount traces her master by means of the post- 
mark on the letter, we may trace Magdalen at the same time, and 
by the same means. Whatever objection you may personally feel 
to renewing the efforts for the rescue of this miserable girl which 


442 


NO NAME. 


failed so lamentably at York, I entreat you, for Norah’s sake, to 
take the same steps now which we took then. Send me the only 
assurance which will quiet her — the assurance, under your own 
hand, that the search on our side has begun. If you will do this, 
you may trust me, when the time comes, to stand between these two 
sisters, and to defend Norah’s peace, character, and future prosper- 
ity at any price. 

“ Most sincerely yours, Harriet Garth.” 

XI. 

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot. 

“ October 28th. 

“ Dear Sir, — I have found the trace you wanted. Mrs. Noel 
Yanstone has written to her sister. The letter contains no address, 
but the postmark is Allonby, in Cumberland. From Allonby, there- 
fore, the inquiries must begin. You have already in your possession 
the personal description of both husband and wife. I urgently rec- 
ommend you not to lose one unnecessary moment. If it is possible 
to send to Cumberland immediately on receipt of this letter, I beg 
you will do so. 

U I have another word to say before I close my note — a word 
about the discovery in Mr. Loscombe’s office. 

“ It is no surprise to me to hear that Mr. Noel Vanstone has made 
his will since his marriage, and I am at no loss to guess in whose 
favor the will is made. If I succeed in finding my master, let that 
person get the money if that person can ! A course to follow in 
this matter has presented itself to my mind since I received your 
letter, but my ignorance of details of business and intricacies of law 
leaves me still uncertain whether my idea is capable of ready and 
certain execution. I know no professional person whom I can trust 
in this delicate and dangerous business. Is your large experience 
in other matters large enough to help me in this ? I will call at 
your office to-morrow at two o’clock, for the purpose of consulting 
you on the subject. It is of the greatest importance, when I next 
see Mr. Noel Yanstone, that he should find me thoroughly prepared 
beforehand in this matter of the will. 

“ Your much obliged servant, Virginie Lecount.” 

XII. 

From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth. 

“ Serle Street, October 29th. 

“ Dear Miss Garth, — I have only a moment to assure you of the 
sorrow with which I have read your letter. The circumstances un- 
der which you urge your request, and the reasons you give for mak- 
ing it, are sufficient to silence any objection I might otherwise feel 


NO NAME. 


443 


to the course you propose. A trustworthy person, whom I have 
myself instructed, will start for Allonby to-day ; and as soon as I re- 
ceive any news from him, you shall hear of it by special messenger. 
Tell Miss Yanstone this, and pray add the sincere expression of my 
sympathy and regard. 

“ Faithfully yours, William Pendril.” 


XIII. 

From Mr. de Bleriot to Mrs. Lecount. 

“Dark’s Buildings, November 1st. 

“Dear Madam, — I have the pleasure of informing you that the 
discovery has been made with far less trouble than I had anticipated. 

“ Mr. and Mrs. Noel Vanstone have been traced across the Solway 
Firth to Dumfries, and thence to a cottage a few miles from the 
town, on the banks of the Nith. The exact address is Baliol Cot- 
tage, near Dumfries. 

“This information, though easily hunted up, has nevertheless 
been obtained under rather singular circumstances. 

“ Before leaving Allonby, the persons in my employ discovered, 
to their surprise, that a stranger was in the place pursuing the same 
inquiry as themselves. In the absence of any instructions prepar- 
ing them for such an occurrence as this, they took their own view 
of the circumstance. Considering the man as an intruder on their 
business, whose success might deprive them of the credit and re- 
ward of making the discovery, they took advantage of their superi- 
ority in numbers, and of their being first in the field, and carefully 
misled the stranger before they ventured any further with their own 
investigations. I am in possession of the details of their proceed- 
ings, with which I need not trouble you. The end is, that this per- 
son, whoever he may be, was cleverly turned back southward on a 
false scent before the men in my employment crossed the Firth. 

“ I mention the circumstance, as you may be better able than I 
am to find a clue to it, and as it may possibly be of a nature to in- 
duce you to hasten your journey. 

“ Your faithful servant, Alfred de Bleriot.” 

XIV. 

From Mrs. Lecount to Mr. de Bleriot 

“November 1st 

“ Dear Sir, — One line to say that your letter has just reached 
me at my lodging in London. I think I know who sent the strange 
man to inquire at Allonby. It matters little. Before he finds out 
his mistake, I shall be at Dumfries. My luggage is packed, and I 
start for the North by the next train. 

“ Your deeply obliged, 


Virginie Lecount.” 


444 


NO NAME. 


THE FIFTH SCENE. 

BALIOL COTTAGE, DUMFRIES. 

CHAPTER I. 

Toward eleven o’clock, on the morning of the third of Novem 
ber, the breakfast-table at Baliol Cottage presented that essentially 
comfortless appearance which is caused by a meal in a state of tran- 
sition — that is to say, by a meal prepared for two persons, which has 
been already eaten by one, and which has not yet been approached 
by the other. It must be a hardy appetite which can contemplate 
without a momentary discouragement the battered egg-shell, the 
fish half stripped to a skeleton, the crumbs in the plate, and the 
dregs in the cup. There is surely a wise submission to those weak- 
nesses in human nature which must be respected and not reproved, 
in the sympathizing rapidity with which servants in places of pub- 
lic refreshment clear away all signs of the customer in the past, 
from the eyes of the customer in the present. Although his prede- 
cessor may have been the wife of his bosom or the child of his loins, 
no man can find himself confronted at table by the traces of a van- 
ished eater, without a passing sense of injury in connection with the 
idea of his own meal. 

Some such impression as this found its way into the mind of Mr. 
Noel Vanstone when he entered the lonely breakfast-parlor at Baliol 
Cottage shortly after eleven o’clock. He looked at the table with a 
frown, and rang the bell with an expression of disgust. 

“ Clear away this mess,” he said, when the servant appeared. 
u Has your mistress gone ?” 

“ Yes, sir — nearly an hour ago.” 

“ Is Louisa down stairs ?” 

u Yes, sir.” 

“ When you have put the table right, send Louisa up to me.” 

He walked away to the window. The momentary irritation pass- 
ed away from his face ; but it left an expression there which re- 
mained — an expression of pining discontent. Personally, his mar- 
riage had altered him for the worse. His wizen little cheeks were 
beginning to shrink into hollows, his frail little figure had already 
contracted a slight stoop. The former delicacy of his complexion 


NO NAME. 


445 


had gone — the sickly paleness of it was all that remained. His thin 
flaxen mustaches were no longer pragmatically waxed and twisted 
into a curl ; their weak feathery ends hung meekly pendent over 
the querulous corners of his mouth. If the ten or twelve weeks 
since his marriage had been counted by his locks, they might have 
reckoned as ten or twelve years. He stood at the window mechan- 
ically picking leaves from a pot of heath placed in front of it, and 
drearily humming the forlorn fragment of a tune. 

The prospect from the window overlooked the course of the Nith 
at a bend of the river a few miles above Dumfries. Here and there, 
through wintry gaps in the wooded bank, broad tracts of the level 
cultivated valley met the eye. Boats passed on the river, and carts 
plodded along the high-road on their way to Dumfries. The sky 
was clear ; the November sun shone as pleasantly as if the year had 
been younger by two good months ; and the view, noted in Scotland 
for its bright and peaceful charm, was presented at the best which 
its wintry aspect could assume. If it had been hidden in mist or 
drenched with rain, Mr. Noel Yanstone would, to all appearance, 
have found it as attractive as he found it now. He waited at the 
window until he heard Louisa’s knock at the door, then turned 
back sullenly to the breakfast-table and told her to come in. 

“ Make the tea,” he said. “ I know nothing about it. I’m left 
here neglected. Nobody helps me.” 

The discreet Louisa silently and submissively obeyed. 

“ Did your mistress leave any message for me,” he asked, “ before 
she went away ?” 

“ No message in particular, sir. My mistress only said she should 
be too late if she waited breakfast any longer.” 

“ Did she say nothing else ?” 

“ She told me at the carriage door, sir, that she would most like- 
ly be back in a week.” 

“ Was she in good spirits at the carriage door ?” 

“ No, sir. I thought my mistress seemed very anxious and un- 
easy. Is there any thing more I can do, sir ?” 

“ I don’t know. Wait a minute.” 

He proceeded discontentedly with his breakfast. Louisa waited 
resignedly at the door. 

“ I think your mistress has been in bad spirits lately,” he re- 
sumed, with a sudden outbreak of petulance. 

u My mistress has not been very cheerful, sir.” 

“ What do you mean by not very cheerful ? Do you mean to pre- 
varicate ? Am I nobody in the house ? Am I to be kept in the 
dark about every thing ? Is your mistress to go away on her own 
affairs, and leave me at home like a child — and am I not even to 
ask a question about her ? Am I to be prevaricated with by a serv- 


446 


NO NAME. 


ant ? I won’t be prevaricated with ! Not very cheerful ? What 
do you mean by not very cheerful ?” 

“ I only meant that my mistress was not in good spirits, sir.” 

“ Why couldn’t you say it, then ? Don’t you know the value of 
words? The most dreadful consequences sometimes happen from 
not knowing the value of words. Did your mistress tell you she 
was going to London ?” 

u Yes, sir.” 

“ What did you think when your mistress told you she was going 
to London ? Did you think it odd she was going without me ?” 

“ I did not presume to think it odd, sir. — Is there any thing more 
I can do for you, if you please, sir ?” 

“ What sort of a morning is it out ? Is it warm ? Is the sun on 
the garden ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ Have you seen the sun yourself on the garden ?” 

u Yes, sir.” 

“ Get me my great-coat ; I’ll take a little turn. Has the man 
brushed it ? Did you see the man brush it yourself ? What do you 
mean by saying he has brushed it, when you didn’t see him ? Let 
me look at the tails. If there’s a speck of dust on the tails, I’ll turn 
the man off! — Help me on with it.” 

Louisa helped him on with his coat, and gave him his hat. He 
went out irritably. The coat was a large one (it had belonged to 
his father) ; the hat was a large one (it was a misfit purchased as a 
bargain by himself). He was submerged in his hat and coat ; he 
looked singularly small, and frail, and miserable, as he slowly wend- 
ed his way, in the wintry sunlight, down the garden walk. The 
path sloped gently from the back of the house to the water-side, 
from which it was parted by a low wooden fence. After pacing 
backward and forward slowly for some little time, he stopped at 
the lower extremity of the garden, and, leaning on the fence, looked 
down listlessly at the smooth flow of the river. 

His thoughts still ran on the subject of his first fretful question to 
Louisa — he was still brooding over the circumstances under which 
his wife had left the cottage that morning, and over the want of 
consideration toward himself implied in the manner of her depart' 
ure. The longer he thought of his grievance, the more acutely he 
resented it. He was capable of great tenderness of feeling where 
any injury to his sense of his own importance was concerned. His 
head drooped little by little on his arms, as they rested on the fence, 
and, in the deep sincerity of his mortification, he sighed bitterly. 

The sigh was answered by a voice close at his side. 

“ You were happier with me, sir,” said the voice, in accents of ten- 
der regret. 


NO NAME. 447 

He looked up with a scream — literally, with a scream — and con- 
fronted Mrs. Lecount. 

Was it the spectre of the woman, or the woman herself? Her 
hair was white ; her face had fallen away ; her eyes looked out 
large, bright, and haggard over her hollow cheeks. She was with- 
ered and old. Her dress hung loose round her wasted figure ; not 
a trace of its buxom autumnal beauty remained. The quietly im- 
penetrable resolution, the smoothly insinuating voice — these were 
the only relics of the past which sickness and suffering had left in 
Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Compose yourself, Mr. Noel,” she said, gently. “ You have no 
cause to be alarmed at seeing me. Your servant, when I inquired, 
said you were in the garden, and I came here to find you. I have 
traced you out, sir, with no resentment against yourself, with no 
wish to distress you by so much as the shadow of a reproach. I 
come here on what has been, and is still, the business of my life — 
your service.” 

He recovered himself a little, but he was still incapable of speech. 
He held fast by the fence, and stared at her. 

“ Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say,” proceeded Mrs. 
Lecount. “ I have not come here as your enemy, but as your friend. 
I have been tried by sickness, I have been tried by distress. Noth- 
ing remains of me but my heart. My heart forgives you ; my heart, 
in your sore need — need which you have yet to feel — places me at 
your service. Take my arm, Mr. Noel. A little turn in the sun will 
help you to recover yourself.” 

She put his hand through her arm, and marched him slowly up 
the garden walk. Before she had been five minutes in his compa- 
ny, she had resumed full possession of him in her own right. 

“ Now down again, Mr. Noel,” she said. “ Gently down again, in 
this fine sunlight. I have much to say to you, sir, which you never 
expected to hear from me. Let me ask a little domestic question 
first. They told me at the house door Mrs. Noel Yanstone was gone 
away on a journey. Has she gone for long ?” 

Her master’s hand trembled on her arm as she put that question. 
Instead of answering it, he tried faintly to plead for himself. The 
first words that escaped him were prompted by his first returning 
sense — the sense that his housekeeper had taken him into custody. 
He tried to make his peace with Mrs. Lecount. 

“ I always meant to do something for you,” he said, coaxingly. 
“ You would have heard from me before long. Upon my word and 
honor, Lecount, you would have heard from me before long !” 

“ I don’t doubt it, sir,” replied Mrs. Lecount. “ But for the pres- 
ent, never mind about Me. You and your interests first.” 

“ How did you come here ?” he asked, looking at her in astonish- 
ment. “ How came you to find me out ?” 


448 


NO NAME. 


« 


“ It is a long story, sir ; I will tell it you some other time. Let 
it be enough to say now that I have found you. Will Mrs. Noel be 
back again at the house to-day ? A little louder, sir ; I can hardly 
hear you. So ! so ! Not back again for a week ! And where has 
she gone ? To London, did you say ? And what for ? — I am not 
inquisitive, Mr. Noel ; I am asking serious questions, under serious 
necessity. Why has your wife left you here, and gone to London 
by herself ?” 

They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry, 
and they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered. 
Her reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were pro- 
ducing their effect ; he was beginning to recover himself. The old 
helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper 
was returning already with the re-appearance of Mrs. Lecount — re- 
turning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk 
about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the break- 
fast-table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his vanity 
to his wife’s maid. 

“I can’t answer for Mrs. Noel Vanstone,” he said, spitefully. 
“ Mrs. Noel Vanstone has not treated me with the consideration 
which is my due. She has taken my permission for granted, and 
she has only thought proper to tell me that the object of her journey 
is to see her friends in London. She went away this morning with- 
out bidding me good-bye. She takes her own way as if I was no- 
body ; she treats me like a child. You may not believe it, Lecount, 
but I don’t even know who her friends are. I am left quite in the 
dark ; I am left to guess for myself that her friends in London are 
her uncle and aunt.” 

Mrs. Lecount privately considered the question by the help of her 
own knowledge obtained in London. She soon reached the obvious 
conclusion. After writing to her sister in the first instance, Mag- 
dalen had now, in all probability, followed the letter in person. 
There was little doubt that the friends she had gone to visit in 
London were her sister and Miss Garth. 

“ Not her uncle and aunt, sir,” resumed Mrs. Lecount, composed- 
ly. “A secret for your private ear! She has no uncle and aunt. 
Another little turn before I explain myself — another little turn to 
compose your spirits.” 

She took him into custody once more, and marched him back to- 
ward the house. 

“ Mr. Noel !” she said, suddenly stopping in the middle of the 
walk. “Do you know what was the worst mischief you ever did 
yourself in your life ? I will tell you. That worst mischief was 
sending me to Zurich.” 

His hand began to tremble on her arm once more. 


NO NAME. 


449 


“ I didn’t do it !” he cried, piteously. “ It was all Mr. Bygrave.” 

“You acknowledge, sir, that Mr. Bygrave deceived me ?” pro- 
ceeded Mrs. Lecount. “ I am glad to hear that. You will be all 
the readier to make the next discovery which is waiting for you — 
the discovery that Mr. Bygrave has deceived you. He is not here 
to slip through my fingers now, and I am not the helpless woman 
in this place that I was at Aldborough. Thank God !” 

She uttered that devout exclamation through her set teeth. All her 
hatred of Captain Wragge hissed out of her lips in those two words. 

“ Oblige me, sir, by holding one side of my traveling-bag,” she 
resumed, “ while I open it and take something out.” 

The interior of the bag disclosed a series of neatly-folded papers, 
all laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs. Lecount 
took out one of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud 
snap of the spring that closed it. 

“ At Aldborough, Mr. Noel, I had only my own opinion to sup- 
port me,” she remarked. “ My own opinion was nothing against 
Miss Bygrave’s youth and beauty, and Mr. Bygrave’s ready wit. I 
could only hope to attack your infatuation with proofs, and at that 
time I had not got them. I have got them now ! I am armed at 
all points with proofs; I bristle from head to foot with proofs; I 
break my forced silence, and speak with the emphasis of my proofs. 
Do you know this writing, sir ?” 

He shrank back from the paper which she offered to him. 

“ I don’t understand this,” he said, nervously. “ I don’t know 
what you want, or what you mean.” 

Mrs. Lecount forced the paper into his hand. “ You shall know 
what I mean, sir, if you will give me a moment’s attention,” she 
said. “ On the day after you went away to St. Crux, I obtained ad- 
mission to Mr. Bygrave’s house, and I had some talk in private with 
Mr. Bygrave’s wife. That talk supplied me with the means to con- 
vince you, which I had wanted to find for weeks and weeks past. 
I wrote you a letter to say so — I wrote to tell you that I would for- 
feit my place in your service, and my expectations from your gen- 
erosity, if I did not prove to you when I came back from Switzer- 
land that my own private suspicion of Miss Bygrave was the truth. 
I directed that letter to you at St. Crux, and I posted it myself. 
Now, Mr. Noel, read the paper which I have forced into your hand. 
It is Admiral Bartram’s written affirmation that my letter came to 
St. Crux, and that he inclosed it to you, under cover to Mr. Bygrave, 
at your own request. Did Mr. Bygrave ever give you that letter? 
Don’t agitate yourself, sir ! One word of reply will do — Yes or No.” 

He read the paper, and looked up at her with growing bewilder- 
ment and fear. She obstinately waited until he spoke. “ No,” he 
said, faintly ; “ I never got the letter.” 


I 


450 NO NAME. 

“ First proof!” said Mrs. Lecount, taking the paper from him, and 
putting it 'back in the bag. “ One more, with your kind permis- 
sion, before we come to things more serious still. I gave you a 
written description, sir, at Aldborough, of a person not named, and 
I asked you to compare it with Miss Bygrave the next time you 
were in her company. After having first shown the description to 
Mr. Bygrave — it is useless to deny it now, Mr. Noel ; your friend at 
North Shingles is not here to help you ! — after having first shown 
my note to Mr. Bygrave, you made the comparison, and you found 
it fail in the most important particular. There were two little 
moles placed close together on the left side of the neck, in my de- 
scription of the unknown lady, and there were no little moles at all 
when you looked at Miss Bygrave’s neck. I am old enough to be 
your mother, Mr. Noel. If the question is not indelicate, may I ask 
what the present state of your knowledge is on the subject of your 
wife’s neck ?” 

She looked at him with a merciless steadiness. He drew back a 
few steps, cowering under her eye. “I can’t say,” he stammered. 
“ I don’t know. What do you mean by these questions ? I never 
thought about the moles afterward ; I never looked. She wears 
her hair low — ” 

“ She has excellent reasons to wear it low, sir,” remarked Mrs. 
Lecount. “We will try and lift that hair before we have done with 
the subject. When I came out here to find you in the garden, I saw 
a neat young person through the kitchen window, with her work in 
her hand, who looked to my eyes like a lady’s maid. Is this young 
person your wife’s maid ? I beg your pardon, sir, did you say yes ? 
In that case, another question, if you please. Did you engage her, 
or did your wife ?” 

“ I engaged her — ” 

“While I was away? While I was in total ignorance that you 
meant to have a wife, or a wife’s maid ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Under those circumstances, Mr. Noel, you can not possibly sus- 
pect me of conspiring to deceive you, with the maid for my instru- 
ment. Go into the house, sir, while I wait here. Ask the woman 
who dresses Mrs. Noel Vanstone’s hair morning and night whether 
her mistress has a mark on the left side of her neck, and (if so) 
what that mark is ?” 

He walked a few steps toward the house without uttering a word, 
then stopped, and looked back at Mrs. Lecount. His blinking eyes 
were steady, and his wizen face had become suddenly composed. 
Mrs. Lecount advanced a little, and joined him. She saw the 
change ; but, with all her experience of him, she failed to interpret 
the true meaning of it. 


NO NAME. 


451 


“ Are you in want of a pretense, sir ?” she asked. “ Are you at a 
loss to account to your wife’s maid for such a question as I wish you 
to put to her ? Pretenses are easily found which will do for per- 
sons in her station of life. Say I have come here with news of a 
legacy for Mrs. Noel Yanstone, and that there is a question of her 
identity to settle before she can receive the money.” 

She pointed to the house. He paid no attention to the sign. His 
face grew paler and paler. Without moving or speaking, he stood 
and looked at her. 

“Are you afraid ?” asked Mrs. Lecount. 

Those words roused him ; those words lit a spark of the fire of 
manhood in him at last. He turned on her like a sheep on a dog. 

“ I won’t be questioned and ordered !” he broke out, trembling 
violently under the new sensation of his own courage. “ I won’t 
be threatened and mystified any longer ! How did you find me out 
at this place ? What do you mean by coming here with your hints 
and your mysteries ? What have you got to say against my wife ?” 

Mrs. Lecount composedly opened the traveling-bag and took out 
her smelling-bottle, in case of emergency. 

“You have spoken to me in plain words,” she said. “In plain 
words, sir, you shall have your answer. Are you too angry to 
listen ?” 

Her looks and tones alarmed him, in spite of himself. His cour- 
age began to sink again ; and, desperately as he tried to steady it, 
his voice trembled when he answered her. 

“ Give me my answer,” he said, “ and give it at once.” 

“ Your commands shall be obeyed, sir, to the letter,” replied Mrs. 
Lecount. “I have come here with two objects. To open your eyes 
to your own situation, and to save your fortune — perhaps your life. 
Your situation is this. Miss Bygrave has married you under a false 
character and a false name. Can you rouse your memory ? Can 
you call to mind the disguised woman who threatened you in Vaux- 
hall Walk? That woman — as certainly as I stand here — is now 
your wife.” 

He looked at her in breathless silence, his lips falling apart, his 
eyes fixed in vacant inquiry. The suddenness of the disclosure had 
overreached its own end. It had stupefied him. 

“ My wife ?” he repeated, and burst into an imbecile laugh. 

“ Your wife,” reiterated Mrs. Lecount. 

At the repetition of those two words, the strain on his faculties 
relaxed. A thought dawned on him for the first time. His eyes 
fixed on her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily. 
“ Mad !” he said to himself, with a sudden remembrance of what 
his friend Mr. Bygrave had told him at Aldborough, sharpened by 
his own sense of the haggard change that he saw in her face. 


452 


NO NAME. 


He spoke in a whisper, but Mrs. Lecount heard him. She was 
close at his side again in an instant. For the first time, her self- 
possession failed her, and she caught him angrily by the arm. 

“ Will you put my madness to the proof, sir ?” she asked. 

He shook off her hold ; he began to gather courage again, in the 
intense sincerity of his disbelief, courage to face the assertion which 
she persisted in forcing on him. 

“ Yes,” he answered. “ What must I do ?” 

“ Do what I told you,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ Ask the maid that 
question about her mistress on the spot. And if she tells you the 
mark is there, do one thing more. Take me up into your wife’s 
room, and open her wardrobe in my presence with your own hands.” 

“ What do you want with her wardrobe ?” he asked. 

“ You shall know when you open it.” 

“ Very strange !” he said to himself, vacantly. “ It’s like a scene 
in a novel — it’s like nothing in real life.” 

He went slowly into the house, and Mrs. Lecount waited for him 
in the garden. 

After an absence of a few minutes only, he appeared again, on the 
top of the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house. 
He held by the iron rail with one hand, while with the other he 
beckoned to Mrs. Lecount to join him on the steps. 

“ What does the maid say ?” she asked, as she approached him. 
“ Is the mark there ?” 

He answered in a whisper, “ Yes.” What he had heard from the 
maid had produced a marked change in him. The horror of the 
coming discovery had laid its paralyzing hold on his mind. He 
moved mechanically ; he looked and spoke like a man in a dream. 

“ Will you take my arm, sir ?” 

He shook his head, and, preceding her along the passage and up 
the stairs, led the way into his wife’s room. When she joined him 
and locked the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, 
without making any remark, without showing any external appear- 
ance of surprise. He had not removed either his hat or coat. Mrs. 
Lecount took them off for him. “ Thank you,” he said, with the 
docility of a well-trained child. “ It’s like a scene in a novel — it’s 
like nothing in real life.” 

The bed-chamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy 
and old-fashioned. But evidences of Magdalen’s natural taste and 
refinement were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that 
graced and enlivened the aspect of the room. The perfume of dried 
rose-leaves hung fragrant on the cool air. Mrs. Lecount sniffed the 
perfume with a disparaging frown, and threw the window up to its 
full height. “ Pah !” she said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust, 
“ the atmosphere of deceit !” 


NO NAME. 


453 


She seated herself near the window. The wardrobe stood against 
the wall opposite, and the bed was at the side of the room on her 
right hand. “ Open the wardrobe, Mr. Noel,” she said. “ I don’t go 
near it. I touch nothing in it myself. Take out the dresses with 
your own hand, and put them on the bed. Take them out one by 
one until I tell you to stop.” 

He obeyed her. u I’ll do it as well as I can,” he said. “ My hands 
are cold, and my head feels half asleep.” 

The dresses to be removed were not many, for Magdalen had 
taken some of them away with her. After he had put two dresses 
on the bed, he was obliged to search in the inner recesses of the 
wardrobe before he could find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. 
Lecount made a sign to him to stop. The end was reached already ; 
he had found the brown Alpaca dress. 

“ Lay it out on the bed, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. u You will see a 
double flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer 
flounce, and pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. 
If you come to a place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, 
stop and look up at me.” 

He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers for a minute 
or more, then stopped and looked up. Mrs. Lecount produced her 
pocket-book, and opened it. 

“ Every word I now speak, sir, is of serious consequence to you 
and to me,” she said. “ Listen with your closest attention. When 
the woman calling herself Miss Garth came to see us in Yauxhall 
Walk, I knelt down behind the chair in which she was sitting, and 
I cut a morsel of stuff from the dress she wore, which might help 
me to know that dress if I ever saw it again. I did this while the 
woman’s whole attention was absorbed in talking to you. The 
morsel of stuff has been kept in my pocket-book from that time to 
this. See for yourself, Mr. Noel, if it fits the gap in that dress which 
your own hands have just taken from your wife’s wardrobe.” 

She rose and handed him the fragment of stuff across the bed. 
He put it into the vacant space in the flounce as well as his trem- 
bling fingers would let him. 

“ Does it fit, sir ?” asked Mrs. Lecount. 

The dress dropped from his hands, and the deadly bluish pal- 
lor — which every doctor who attended him had warned his house- 
keeper to dread — overspread his face slowly. Mrs. Lecount had not 
reckoned on such an answer to her question as she now saw in his 
cheeks. She hurried round to him, with the smelling-bottle in her 
hand. He dropped to his knees, and caught at her dress with the 
grasp of a drowning man. “ Save me !” he gasped, in a hoarse, 
breathless whisper. “ Oh, Lecount, save me !” 

“ I promise to save you,” said Mrs. Lecount ; “lam here with the 


454 


NO NAME. 


means and the resolution to save you. Come away from this place— 
come nearer to the air.” She raised him as she spoke, and led him 
across the room to the window. “ Do you feel the chill pain again 
on your left side ?” she asked, with the first signs of alarm that she 
had shown yet. “ Has your wife got any eau-de-cologne, any sal- 
volatile in her room ? Don’t exhaust yourself by speaking — point 
to the place !” 

He pointed to a little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten wal- 
nut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried 
the door : it was locked. 

As she made that discovery, she saw his head sink back gradu- 
ally on the easy-chair in which she had placed him. The warning 
of the doctors in past years — “ If you ever let him faint, you let him 
die ” — recurred to her memory as if it had been spoken the day be- 
fore. She looked at the cupboard again. In a recess under it lay 
some ends of cord, placed there apparently for purposes of packing. 
Without an instant’s hesitation, she snatched up a morsel of cord, 
tied one end fast round the knob of the cupboard door, and seizing 
the other end in both hands, pulled it suddenly with the exertion 
of her whole strength. The rotten wood gave way, the cupboard 
doors flew open, and a heap of little trifles poured out noisily on 
the floor. Without stopping to notice the broken china and glass 
at her feet, she looked into the dark recesses of the cupboard, and 
saw the gleam of two glass bottles. One was put away at the ex- 
treme back of the shelf, the other was a little in advance, almost 
hiding it. She snatched them both out at once, and took them, one 
in each hand, to the window, where she could read their labels in 
the clearer light. 

The bottle in her right hand was the first bottle she looked at. 
It was marked — Sal-volatile. 

She instantly laid the other bottle aside on the table without 
looking at it. The other bottle lay there, waiting its turn. It held 
a dark liquid, and it was labeled — Poison. 


CHAPTER II. 

Mrs. Lecount mixed the sal- volatile with water, and adminis- 
tered it immediately. The stimulant had its effect. In a few min- 
utes Noel Yanstone was able to raise himself in the chair without 
assistance ; his color changed again for the better, and his breath 
came and went more freely. 

“How do you feel now, sir?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “Are you 
warm again on your left side ?” 


Jl 



“ip you ever let him faint, you let him DIB.” 


* 


•A 



































































NO NAME. 


457 


He paid no attention to that inquiry ; his eyes, wandering about 
the room, turned by chance toward the table. To Mrs. Lecount’s 
surprise, instead of answering her, he bent forward in his chair, and 
looked with staring eyes and pointing hand at the second bottle 
which she had taken from the cupboard, and which she had hasti- 
ly laid aside without paying attention to it. Seeing that some new 
alarm possessed him, she advanced to the table, and looked where 
he looked. The labeled side of the bottle was full in view; and 
there, in the plain handwriting of the chemist at Aldborough, was 
the one startling word confronting them both — “ Poison.” 

Even Mrs. Lecount’s self-possession was shaken by that discovery. 
She was not prepared to see her own darkest forebodings — the un- 
acknowledged offspring of her hatred for Magdalen — realized as she 
saw them realized now. The suicide-despair in which the poison 
had been procured ; the suicide-purpose for which, in distrust of 
the future, the poison had been kept, had brought with them their 
own retribution. There the bottle lay, in Magdalen’s absence, a 
false witness of treason which had never entered her mind — treason 
against her husband’s life ! 

With his hand still mechanically pointing at the table, Noel Van- 
stone raised his head and looked up at Mrs. Lecount. 

“I took it from the cupboard,” she said, answering the look. 
“ I took both bottles out together, not knowing which might be 
the bottle I wanted. I am as much shocked, as much frightened, 
as you are.” 

“ Poison !” he said to himself, slowly. “ Poison locked up by my 
wife in the cupboard in her own room.” He stopped, and looked 
at Mrs. Lecount once more. “For me?” he asked, in a vacant, in- 
quiring tone. 

“We will not talk of it, sir, until your mind is more at ease,” 
said Mrs. Lecount. “ In the mean time, the danger that lies waiting 
in this bottle shall be instantly destroyed in your presence.” She 
took out the cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the 
empty bottle after it. “ Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery 
for the present,” she resumed ; “ let us go down stairs at once. All 
that I have now to say to you can be said in another room.” 

She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her 
own. “ It is well for him ; it is well for me,” she thought, as they 
went down stairs together, “ that I came when I did.” 

On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the 
carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and in- 
structed the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to 
call again for her in two hours’ time. This done, she. accompanied 
Noel Vanstone into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed 
him before it comfortably in an easy-chair. He sat for a few min' 


458 


NO NAME. 


utes, warming his hands feebly like an old man, and staring straight 
into the flame. Then he spoke. 

“When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk,” 
he began, still staring into the fire, “ you came back to the parlor 
after she was gone, and you told me — ?” He stopped, shivered a 
little, and lost the thread of his recollections at that point. 

u I told you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, “ that the woman was, in my 
opinion, Miss Vanstone herself. Don’t start, Mr. Noel ! Your wife 
is away, and I am here to take care of you. Say to yourself, if you 
feel frightened, ‘ Lecount is here ; Lecount will take care of me.’ 
The truth must be told, sir, however hard to bear the truth may be. 
Miss Magdalen Vanstone was the woman who came to you in dis- 
guise ; and the woman who came to you in disguise is the woman 
you have married. The conspiracy which she threatened you with 
in London is the conspiracy which has made her your wife. That 
is the plain truth. You have seen the dress up stairs. If that dress 
had been no longer in existence, I should still have had my proofs 
to convince you. Thanks to my interview with Mrs. Bygrave, I 
have discovered the house your wife lodged at in London ; it was 
opposite our house in Vauxhall Walk. I have laid my hand on 
one of the landlady’s daughters, who watched your wife from an 
inner room, and saw her put on the disguise ; who can speak to her 
identity, and to the identity of her companion, Mrs. Bygrave ; and 
who has furnished me, at my own request, with a written statement 
of facts, which she is ready to affirm on oath if any person ventures 
to contradict her. You shall read the statement, Mr. Noel, if you 
like, when you are fitter to understand it. You shall also read a 
letter in the handwriting of Miss Garth — who will repeat to you 
personally every word she has written to me — a letter formally deny- 
ing that she was ever in Vauxhall Walk, and formally asserting that 
those moles on your wife’s neck are marks peculiar to Miss Mag- 
dalen Vanstone, whom she has known from childhood. I say it 
with a just pride — you will find no weak place anywhere in the evi- 
dence which I bring you. If Mr. Bygrave had not stolen my letter, 
you would have had your warning before I was cruelly deceived 
into going to Zurich ; and the proofs which I now bring you, after 
your marriage, I should then have offered to you before it. Don’t 
hold me responsible, sir, for what has happened since I left England. 
Blame your uncle’s bastard daughter, and blame that villain with 
the brown eye and the green !” 

She spoke her last venomous words as slowly and distinctly as 
she had spoken all the rest. Noel Vanstone made no answer — he 
still sat cowering over the fire. She looked round into his face. 
He was crying silently. “ I was so fond of her ?” said the miserable 
fiitle creatqre ; “ and I thought she was so fojid of M e 1” 


NO NAME. 


459 


Mrs. Lecount turned her back on him in disdainful silence. 
“Fond of her!” As she repeated those words to herself, her hag- 
gard face became almost handsome again in the magnificent inten- 
sity of its contempt. 

She walked to a book-case at the lower end of the room, and 
began examining the volumes in it. Before she had been long 
engaged in this way, she was startled by the sound of his voice, 
aftrightedly calling her back. The tears were gone from his face : it 
was blank again with terror when he now turned it toward her. 

“ Lecount !” he said, holding to her with both hands. “ Can an 
egg be poisoned ? I had an egg for breakfast this morning, and a 
little toast.” 

“ Make your mind easy, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ The poison of 
your wife’s deceit is the only poison you have taken yet. If she 
had resolved already on making you pay the price of your folly 
with your life, she would not be absent from the house while you 
were left living in it. Dismiss the thought from your mind. It is 
the middle of the day ; you want refreshment. I have more to say 
to you in the interests of your own safety — I have something for 
you to do, which must be done at once. Recruit your strength, and 
you will do it. I will set you the example of eating, if you still 
distrust the food in this house. Are you composed enough to give 
the servant her orders, if I ring the bell ? It is necessary to the ob- 
ject I have in view for you, that nobody should think you ill in 
body or troubled in mind. Try first with me before the servant 
comes in. Let us see how you look and speak when you say, 4 Bring 
up the lunch.’ ” 

After two rehearsals, Mrs. Lecount considered him fit to give the 
order, without betraying himself. 

The bell was answered by Louisa— Louisa looked hard at Mrs. 
Lecount. The luncheon was brought up by the house-maid — the 
house-maid looked hard at Mrs. Lecount. When luncheon was 
over, the table was cleared by the cook — the cook looked hard at 
Mrs. Lecount. The three servants were plainly suspicious that 
something extraordinary was going on in the house. It was hard- 
ly possible to doubt that they had arranged to share among them- 
selves the three opportunities which the service of the table afford- 
ed them of entering the room. 

The curiosity of which she was the object did not escape the 
penetration of Mrs. Lecount. 44 1 did well,” she thought, 44 to arm 
myself in good time with the means of reaching my end. If I let 
the grass grow under my feet, one or the other of those women 
might get in my way.” Roused by this consideration, she pro- 
duced her traveling-bag from a corner, as soon as the last of the 
servants had entered the room ; and seating herself at the end of 


460 


NO NAME. 


the table opposite Noel Vanstone, looked at him for a moment, with 
a steady, investigating attention. She had carefully regulated the 
quantity of wine which he had taken at luncheon — she had let him 
drink exactly enough to fortify, without confusing him ; and she 
now examined his face critically, like an artist examining his pic- 
ture at the end of the day’s work. The result appeared to satisfy 
her, and she opened the serious business of the interview on the 
spot. 

“ Will you look at the written evidence I have mentioned to you, 
Mr. Noel, before I say any more ?” she inquired. “ Or are you suf- 
ficiently persuaded of the truth to proceed at once to the suggestion 
which I have now to make to you ?” 

“ Let me hear your suggestion,” he said, sullenly resting his el- 
bows on the table, and leaning his head on his hands. 

Mrs. Lecount took from her traveling-bag the written evidence to 
which she had just alluded, and carefully placed the papers on one 
side of him, within easy reach, if he wished to refer to them. Far 
from being daunted, she was visibly encouraged by the ungracious- 
ness of his manner. Her experience of him informed her that the 
sign was a promising one. On those rare occasions when the little 
resolution that he possessed was roused in him, it invariably as- 
serted itself — like the resolution of most other weak men — aggress- 
ively. At such times, in proportion as he was outwardly sullen and 
discourteous to those about him, his resolution rose ; and in propor- 
tion as he was considerate and polite, it fell. The tone of the an- 
swer he had just given, and the attitude he assumed at the table, 
convinced Mrs. Lecount that Spanish wine and Scotch mutton had 
done their duty, and had rallied his sinking courage. 

“ I will put the question to you for form’s sake, sir, if you wish it,” 
she proceeded. “ But I am already certain, without any question 
at all, that you have made your will ?” 

He nodded his head without looking at her. 

“ You have made it in your wife’s favor ?” 

He nodded again. 

“ You have left her every thing you possess 

‘•No.” 

Mrs. Lecount looked surprised. 

“ Did you exercise a reserve toward her, Mr. Noel, of your own 
accord ?” she inquired ; “ or is it possible that your wife put her 
own limits to her interest in your will ?” 

He was uneasily silent — he was plainly ashamed to answer the 
ques on. Mrs. Lecount repeated it in a less direct form. 

“ How much have you left your widow, Mr. Noel, in the event of 
your death ?” 

“ Eighty thousand pounds.” 


NO NAME. 


461 


That reply answered the question. Eighty thousand pounds was 
3xactly the fortune which Michael Yanstone had taken from his 
brother’s orphan children at his brother’s death — exactly the fortune 
of which Michael Vanstone’s son had kept possession, in his turn, 
as pitilessly as his father before him. Noel Vanstone’s silence was 
eloquent of the confession which he was ashamed to make. His 
doting weakness had, beyond all doubt, placed his whole property 
at the feet of his wife. And this girl, whose vindictive daring had 
defied all restraints — this girl, who had not shrunk from her desper- 
ate determination even at the church door — had, in the very hour 
of her triumph, taken part only from the man who would willingly 
have given all ! — had rigorously exacted her father’s fortune from 
him to the last farthing ; and had then turned her back on the hand 
that was tempting her with tens of thousands more ! For the mo- 
ment, Mrs. Lecount was fairly silenced by her own surprise ; Mag- 
dalen had forced the astonishment from her which is akin to admi- 
ration, the astonishment which her enmity would fain have refused. 
She hated Magdalen with a tenfold hatred from that time. 

“I have no doubt, sir,” she resumed, after a momentary silence, 
“ that Mrs. Noel gave you excellent reasons why the provision for 
her at your death should be no more, and no less, than eighty thou- 
sand pounds. And, on the other hand, I am equally sure that you, 
in your innocence of all suspicion, found those reasons conclusive at 
the time. That time has now gone by. Your eyes are opened, sir; 
and you will not fail to remark (as I remark) that the Combe-Raven 
property happens to reach the same sum exactly, as the legacy which 
your wife’s own instructions directed you to leave her. If you are 
still in any doubt of the motive for which she married you, look in 
your own will — and there the motive is !” 

He raised his head from his hands, and became closely attentive 
to what she was saying to him, for the first time since they had 
faced each other at the table. The Combe-Raven property had 
never been classed by itself in his estimation. It had come to him 
merged in his father’s other possessions, at his father’s death. The 
discovery which had now opened before him was one to which his 
ordinary habits of thought, as well as his innocence of suspicion, 
had hitherto closed his eyes. He said nothing ; but he looked less 
sullenly at Mrs. Lecount. His manner was more ingratiating ; the 
high tide of his courage was already on the ebb. 

“Your position, sir, must be as plain by this time to you as it is 
to me,” said Mrs. Lecount. “There is only one obstacle now lert 
between this woman and the attainment of her end. That obstach 
is your life. After the discovery we have made up stairs, I leave 
you to consider for yourself what your life is worth.” 

At those terrible words, the ebbing resolution in him ran out to 


462 


NO NAME. 


the last drop. “ Don’t frighten me !” he pleaded ; “ I have been 
frightened enough already.” He rose, and dragged his chair after 
him round the table to Mrs. Lecount’s side. He sat down and 
caressingly kissed her hand. “ You good creature !” he said, in a 
sinking voice. “You excellent Lecount! Tell me what to do. 
I’m full of resolution — I’ll do any thing to save my life !” 

“ Have you got writing materials in the room, sir ?” asked Mrs. 
Lecount. “ Will you put them on the table, if you please ?” 

While the writing materials were in process of collection, Mrs. Le- 
count made a new demand on the resources of her traveling-bag. 
She took two papers from it, each indorsed in the same neat com- 
mercial handwriting. One was described as “Draft for proposed 
Will,” and the other as “ Draft for proposed Letter.” When she 
placed them before her on the table, her hand shook a little ; and 
she applied the smelling-salts, which she had brought with her in 
Noel Vanstone’s interests, to her own nostrils. 

“ I had hoped, when I came here, Mr. Noel,” she proceeded, “ to 
have given you more time for consideration than it seems safe to 
give you now. When you first told me of your wife’s absence in 
London, I thought it probable that the object of her journey was to 
see her sister and Miss Garth. Since the horrible discovery we have 
made up stairs, I am inclined to alter that opinion. Your wife’s de- 
termination not to tell you who the friends are whom she has gone 
to see, fills me with alarm. She may have accomplices in London — 
accomplices, for any thing we know to the contrary, in this house. 
All three of your servants, sir, have taken the opportunity, in turn, 
of coming into the room and looking at me. I don’t like their 
looks ! Neither you nor I know what may happen from day to 
day, or even from hour to hour. If you take my advice, you will 
get the start at once of all possible accidents ; and, when the car- 
riage comes back, you will leave this house with me !” 

“ Yes, yes !” he said, eagerly; “ I’ll leave the house with you. I 
wouldn’t stop here by myself for any sum of money that could be 
offered me. What do we want the pen and ink for? Are you to 
write, or am I ?” 

“ You are to write, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ The means taken 
for promoting your own safety are to be means set in motion, from 
beginning to end, by yourself. I suggest, Mr. Noel — and you de- 
cide. Recognize your own position, sir. What is your first and 
foremost necessity ? It is plainly this. You must destroy your 
wife’s interest in your death by making another will.” 

He vehemently nodded his approval; his color rose, and his 
blinking eyes brightened in malicious triumph. “ She sha’n’t have 
a farthing,” he said to himself, in a whisper — “ she sha’n’t have a 
farthing !” 


NO NAME. 


463 


“ When your will is made, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Lecount, “ you 
must place it in the hands of a trustworthy person — not my hands, 
Mr. Noel ; I am only your servant ! Then, when the will is safe, 
and when you are safe, write to your wife at this house. Tell her 
her infamous imposture is discovered ; tell her you have made a 
new will, which leaves her penniless at your death ; tell her, in your 
righteous indignation, that she enters your doors no more. Place 
yourself in that strong position, and it is no longer you who are at 
your wife’s mercy, but your wife who is at yours. Assert your own 
power, sir, with the law to help you, and crush this woman into sub- 
mission to any terms for the future that you please to impose.” 

He eagerly took up the pen. “ Yes,” he said, with a vindictive 
self-importance, “ any terms I please to impose.” He suddenly 
checked himself, and his face became dejected and perplexed. 
“How can I do it now?” he asked, throwing down the pen as 
quickly as he had taken it up. 

“ Do what, sir ?” inquired Mrs. Lecount. 

“ How can I make my will, with Mr. Loscombe away in London, 
and no lawyer here to help me ?” 

Mrs. Lecount gently tapped the papers before her on the table 
with her forefinger. 

“ All the help you need, sir, is waiting for you here,” she said. 
“ I considered this matter carefully before I came to you ; and I 
provided myself with the confidential assistance of a friend, to guide 
me through those difficulties which I could not penetrate for my- 
self. The friend to whom I refer is a gentleman of Swiss extraction, 
but born and bred in England. He is not a lawyer by profession — 
but he has had his own sufficient experience of the law, neverthe- 
less ; and he has supplied me, not only with a model by which you 
may make your will, but with the written sketch of a letter which 
it is as important for us to have, as the model of the will itself. 
There is another necessity waiting for you, Mr. Noel, which I have 
not mentioned yet, but which is no less urgent in its way than the 
necessity of the will.” 

“ What is it ?” he asked, with roused curiosity. 

“We will take it in its turn, sir,” answered Mrs. Lecount. “ Its 
turn has not come yet. The will, if you please, first. I will dictate 
from the model in my possession, and you will write.” 

Noel Yanstone looked at the draft for the Will and the draft for 
the Letter with suspicious curiosity. 

“ I think I ought to see the papers myself, before you dictate,” he 
said. “ It would be more satisfactory to my own mind, Lecount.” 

“ By all means, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, handing him the pa- 
pers immediately. 

He read the draft for the Will first, pausing and knitting hie 


464 


No name:. 


brows distrustfully, wherever he found blank spaces left in the 
manuscript to be filled in with the names of persons, and the enu- 
meration of sums bequeathed to them. Two or three minutes of 
reading brought him to the end of the paper. He gave it back to 
Mrs. Lecount without making any objection to it. 

The draft for the Letter was a much longer document. He ob- 
stinately read it through to the end, with an expression of perplex- 
ity and discontent which showed that it was utterly unintelligible 
to him. “ I must have this explained,” he said, with a touch of his 
old self-importance, “ before I take any steps in the matter.” 

“ It shall be explained, sir, as we go on,” said Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Every word of it ?” 

“ Every word of it, Mr. Noel, when its turn comes. You have no 
objection to the will ? To the will, then, as I said before, let us 
devote ourselves first. You have seen for yourself that it is short 
enough and simple enough for a child to understand it. But if any 
doubts remain on your mind, by all means compose those doubts by 
showing your will to a lawyer by profession. In the mean time, let 
me not be considered intrusive, if I remind you that we are all mor- 
tal, and that the lost opportunity can never be recalled. While your 
time is your own, sir, and while your enemies are unsuspicious of 
you, make your will !” 

She opened a sheet of note-paper, and smoothed it out before him ; 
she dipped the pen in ink, and placed it in his hands. He took it 
from her without speaking — he was, to all appearance, suffering un- 
der some temporary uneasiness of mind. But the main point was 
gained. There he sat, with the paper before him, and the pen in 
his hand ; ready at last, in right earnest, to make his will. 

“The first question for you to decide, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, 
after a preliminary glance at her Draft, “ is your choice of an execu- 
tor. I have no desire to influence your decision ; but I may, with- 
out impropriety, remind you that a wise choice means, in other 
words, the choice of an old and tried friend whom you know that 
you can trust.” 

“ It means the admiral, I suppose ?” said Noel Yanstone. 

Mrs. Lecount bowed. 

“ Very well,” he continued. “ The admiral let it be.” 

There was plainly some oppression still weighing on his mind. 
Even under the trying circumstances in which he was placed, it was 
not in his nature to take Mrs. Lecount’s perfectly sensible and dis- 
interested advice without a word of cavil, as he had taken it now. 

“ Are you ready, sir ?” 

“ Yes.” 

Mrs. Lecount dictated the first paragraph from the Draft, as fol- 
lows : 


NO NAME. 


465 


“ This is the last Will and Testament of me, Noel Vanstone, now 
living at Baliol Cottage, near Dumfries. I revoke, absolutely and 
in every particular, my former will executed on the thirtieth of 
September, eighteen hundred and forty-seven ; and I hereby appoint 
Rear-Admiral Arthur Everard Bartram, of St. Crux-in-the-Marsh, 
Essex, sole executor of this my will.” 

“ Have you written those words, sir ?” 

“ Yes.” 

Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft ; Noel Yanstone laid down the 
pen. They neither of them looked at each other. There was a 
long silence. 

“ I am waiting, Mr. Noel,” said Mrs. Lecount, at last, “ to hear 
what your wishes are in respect to the disposal of your fortune. 
Your large fortune,” she added, with merciless emphasis. 

He took up the pen again, and began picking the feathers from 
the quill in dead silence. 

“ Perhaps your existing will may help you to instruct me, sir,” pur- 
sued Mrs. Lecount. “ May I inquire to whom you left all your sur- 
plus money, after leaving the eighty thousand pounds to your wife ?” 

If he had answered that question plainly, he must have said, “ I 
have left the whole surplus to my cousin, George Bartram” — and 
the implied acknowledgment that Mrs. Lecount’s name was not men- 
tioned in the will must then have followed in Mrs. Lecount’s pres- 
ence. A much bolder man, in his situation, might have felt the same 
oppression and the same embarrassment which he was feeling now. 
He picked the last morsel of feather from the quill ; and, desper- 
ately leaping the pitfall under his feet, advanced to meet Mrs. Le- 
count’s claims on him of his own accord. 

“ I would rather not talk of any will but the will I am making 
now,” he said, uneasily. “ The first thing, Lecount — ” He hesita- 
ted — put the bare end of the quill into his mouth — gnawed at it 
thoughtfully — and said no more. 

“Yes, sir?” persisted Mrs. Lecount. 

“ The first thing is — ” 

“Yes, sir ?” 

“ The first thing is, to — to make some provision for You?” 

He spoke the last words in a tone of plaintive interrogation — as 
if all hope of being met by a magnanimous refusal had not deserted 
him even yet. Mrs. Lecount enlightened his mind on this point, 
without a moment’s loss of time. 

“ Thank you, Mr. Noel,” she said, with the tone and manner of a 
woman who was not acknowledging a favor, but receiving a right. 

He took another bite at the quill. The perspiration began to 
appear on his face. 


466 


NO NAME. 


“ The difficulty is,” he remarked, “ to say how much.” 

“Your lamented father, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “met that 
difficulty (if you remember) at the time of his last illness ?” 

“ I don’t remember,” said Noel Yanstone, doggedly. 

“You were on one side of his bed, sir, and I was on the other. 
We were vainly trying to persuade him to make his will. After 
telling us he would wait, and make his will when he was well again, 
he looked round at me, and said some kind and feeling words which 
my memory will treasure to my dying day. Have you forgotten 
those words, Mr. Noel ?” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Noel, without hesitation. 

“ In my present situation, sir,” retorted Mrs. Lecount, “ delicacy 
forbids me to improve your memory.” 

She looked at her watch, and relapsed into silence. He clenched 
his hands, and writhed from side to side of his chair in an agony 
of indecision. Mrs. Lecount passively refused to take the slightest 
notice of him. 

“What should you say — ?” he began, and suddenly stopped 
again. 

“ Yes, sir ?” 

“ What should you say to — a thousand pounds ?” 

Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair, and looked him full in the face, 
with the majestic indignation of an outraged woman. 

“After the service I have rendered you to-day, Mr. Noel,” she 
said, “ I have at least earned a claim on your respect, if I have earn- 
ed nothing more. I wish you good-morning.” 

“ Two thousand !” cried Noel Yanstone, with the courage of 
despair. 

Mrs. Lecount folded up her papers, and hung her traveling-bag 
over her arm in contemptuous silence. 

“ Three thousand !” 

Mrs. Lecount moved with impenetrable dignity from the table to 
the door. 

“ Four thousand !” 

Mrs. Lecount gathered her shawl round her with a shudder, and 
opened the door. 

“ Five thousand !” 

He clasped Ms hands, and wrung them at her in a frenzy of rage 
and suspense. “ Five thousand,” was the death-cry of his pecuniary 
suicide. 

Mrs. Lecount softly shut the door again, and came back a step. 

“ Free of legacy duty, sir ?” she inquired. 

“ No !” 

Mrs. Lecount turned on her heel, and opened the door again. 

“Yes.” 



MRS. LECOUNT MOVED WITH IMPENETRABLE DIGNITY FROM THE TABLE TO 

THE DOOR. 











NO NAME. 


469 


Mrs. Lecount came back, and resumed her place at the table as if 
nothing had happened. 

“ Five thousand pounds, free of legacy duty, was the sum, sir, 
which your father’s grateful regard promised me in his will,” she 
said, quietly. “ If you choose to exert your memory, as you have 
not chosen to exert it yet, your memory will tell you that I speak 
the truth. I accept your filial performance of your father’s pronv 
ise, Mr. Noel — and there I stop. I scorn to take a mean advantage 
of my position toward you ; I scorn to grasp any thing from your 
fears. You are protected by my respect for myself, and for the Il- 
lustrious Name I bear. You are welcome to all that I have done, 
and to all that I have suffered in your service. The widow of 
Professor Lecompte, sir, takes what is justly hers — and takes no 
more !” 

As she spoke those words, the traces of sickness seemed, for the 
moment, to disappear from her face ; her eyes shone with a steady 
inner light ; all the woman warmed and brightened in the radiance 
of her own triumph — the triumph, trebly won, of carrying her point, 
of vindicating her integrity, and of matching Magdalen’s incorrupt- 
ible self-denial on Magdalen’s own ground. 

“ When you are yourself again, sir, we will proceed. Let us wait 
a little first.” 

She gave him time to compose himself ; and then, after first look- 
ing at her Draft, dictated the second paragraph of the will, in these 
terms : 

“I give and bequeath to Madame Yirginie Lecompte (widow 
of Professor Lecompte, late of Zurich) the sum of Five Thousand 
Pounds, free of Legacy Duty. And, in making this bequest, I wish 
to place it on record that I am not only expressing my own sense of 
Madame Lecompte’s attachment and fidelity in the capacity of my 
housekeeper, but that I also believe myself to be executing the in- 
tentions of my deceased father, who, but for the circumstance of his 
dying intestate, would have left Madame Lecompte, in his will, the 
same token of grateful regard for her services which I now leave 
her in mine.” 

“ Have you written the last words, sir ?” 

“ Yes.” 

Mrs. Lecount leaned across the table and offered Noel Vanstone 
her hand. 

“ Thank you, Mr Noel,” she said. “ The five thousand pounds is 
the acknowledgment on your father’s side of what I have done for 
him. The words in the will are the acknowledgment on yours.” 

A faint smile flickered over his face for the first time. It com' 


470 


NO NAME. 


forted him, on reflection, to think that matters might have been 
worse. There was balm for his wounded spirit, in paying the debt 
of gratitude by a sentence not negotiable at his banker’s. What- 
ever his father might have done, he had got Lecount a bargain, 
after all ! 

“ A little more writing, sir,” resumed Mrs. Lecount, “ and your 
painful but necessary duty will be performed. The trifling matter 
of my legacy being settled, we may come to the important question 
that is left. The future direction of a large fortune is now waiting 
your word of command. To whom is it to go ?” 

He began to writhe again in his chair. Even under the all-pow- 
erful fascination of his wife, the parting with his money on paper 
had not been accomplished without a pang. He had endured the 
pang ; he had resigned himself to the sacrifice. And now here was 
the dreaded ordeal again, awaiting him mercilessly for the second 
time ! 

“ Perhaps it may assist your decision, sir, if I repeat a question 
which I have put to you already,” observed Mrs. Lecount. “ In the 
will that you made under your wife’s influence, to whom did you 
leave the surplus money which remained at your own disposal ?” 

There was no harm in answering the question now. He acknowl- 
edged that he had left the money to his cousin George. 

“ You could have done nothing better, Mr. Noel ; and you can do 
nothing better now,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ Mr. George and his two 
sisters are your only relations left. One of those sisters is an in- 
curable invalid, with more than money enough already for all the 
wants which her affliction allows her to feel. The other is the wife 
of a man, even richer than yourself. To leave the money to these 
sisters is to waste it. To leave the money to their brother George 
is to give your cousin exactly the assistance which he will want 
when he one day inherits his uncle’s dilapidated house, and his 
uncle’s impoverished estate. A will which names the admiral your 
executor, and Mr. George your heir, is the right will for you to make. 
It does honor to the claims of friendship, and it does justice to the 
claims of blood.” 

She spoke warmly ; for she spoke with a grateful remembrance 
of all that she herself owed to the hospitality of St. Crux. Noel 
Yanstone took up another pen, and began to strip the second quill 
of its feathers as he had stripped the first. 

“ Yes,” he said, reluctantly, “ I suppose George must have it — I 
suppose George has the principal claim on me.” He hesitated : he 
looked at the door, he looked at the window, as if he longed to make 
his escape by one way or the other. “ Oh, Lecount,” he cried, pit- 
eously, “ it’s such a large fortune ! Let me wait a little before I 
leave it to any body.” 


NO NAME. 471 

To his surprise, Mrs. Lecount at once complied with this charac- 
teristic request. 

“ I wish you to wait, sir,” she replied. “ I have something im- 
portant to say, before you add another line to your will. A little 
while since, I told you there was a second necessity connected with 
your present situation, which had not been provided for yet, but 
which must be provided for, when the time came. The time has 
come now. You have a serious difficulty to meet and conquer be- 
fore you can leave your fortune to your cousin George.” 

“ What difficulty ?” he asked. 

Mrs. Lecount rose from her chair without answering, stole to the 
door, and suddenly threw it open. No one was listening outside ; 
the passage was a solitude, from one end to the other. 

“ I distrust all servants,” she said, returning to her place — “ your 
servants particularly. Sit closer, Mr. Noel. What I have now to 
say to you must be heard by no living creature but ourselves.” 


CHAPTER III. 

There was a pause of a few minutes while Mrs. Lecount opened 
the second of the two papers which lay before her on the table, and 
refreshed her memory by looking it rapidly through. This done, 
she once more addressed herself to Noel Yanstone, carefully lower- 
ing her voice, so as to render it inaudible to any one who might be 
listening in the passage outside. 

“ I must beg your permission, sir,” she began, “ to return to the 
subject of your wife. I do so most unwillingly ; and I promise you 
that what I have now to say about her shall be said, for your sake 
and for mine, in the fewest words. What do we know of this wom- 
an, Mr. Noel — judging her by her own confession when she came to 
us in the character of Miss Garth, and by her own acts afterward at 
Aldborough ? We know that, if death had not snatched your fa- 
ther out of her reach, she was ready with her plot to rob him of the 
Combe-Raven money. We know that, when you inherited the mon- 
ey in your turn, she was ready with her plot to rob you. We know 
how she carried that plot through to the end ; and we know that 
nothing but your death is wanted, at this moment, to crown her 
rapacity and her deception with success. We are sure of these 
things. We are sure that she is young, bold, and clever — that she 
has neither doubts, scruples, nor pity — and that she possesses the 
personal qualities which men in general (quite incomprehensibly to 
me!) are weak enough to admire. These are not fancies, Mr. Noel, 
but facts ; you know them as well as I do.” 

He made a sign in the affirmative, and Mrs. Lecount went on : 


472 


NO NAME. 


“ Keep in your mind what I have said of the past, sir, and now 
look with me to the future. I hope and trust you have a long life 
still before you ; but let us, for the moment only, suppose the case 
of your death — your death leaving this will behind you, which gives 
your fortune to your cousin George. I am told there is an office 
in London in which copies of all wills must be kept. Any curious 
stranger who chooses to pay a shilling for the privilege may enter 
that office, and may read any will in the place at his or her discre- 
tion. Do you see what I am coming to, Mr. Noel ? Your disinher- 
ited widow pays her shilling, and reads your will. Your disinher- 
ited widow sees that the Combe-Raven money, which has gone 
from your father to you, goes next from you to Mr. George Bar- 
tram. What is the certain end of that discovery ? The end is, that 
you leave to your cousin and your friend the legacy of this woman’s 
vengeance and this woman’s deceit — vengeance made more resolute, 
deceit made more devilish than ever, by her exasperation at her own 
failure. What is your cousin George ? He is a generous, unsuspi- 
cious man ; incapable of deceit himself, and fearing no deception in 
others. Leave him at the mercy of your wife’s unscrupulous fasci- 
nations and your wife’s umfathomable deceit, and I see the end as 
certainly as I see you sitting there ! She will blind his eyes, as she 
blinded yours ; and, in spite of you , in spite of me, she will have the 
money !” 

She stopped, and left her last words time to gain their hold on 
his mind. The circumstances had been stated so clearly, the con- 
clusion from them had been so plainly drawn, that he seized her 
meaning without an effort, and seized it at once. 

“ I see !” he said, vindictively clenching his hands. “ I under- 
stand, Lecount ! She sha’n’t have a farthing. What shall I do ? 
Shall I leave the money to the admiral ?” He paused, and consid- 
ered a little. “ No,” he resumed ; “ there’s the same danger in leav- 
ing it to the admiral that there is in leaving it to George.” 

“ There is no danger, Mr. Noel, if you take my advice.” 

“ What is your advice ?” 

“ Follow your own idea, sir. Take the pen in hand again, and 
leave the money to Admiral Bartram.” 

He mechanically dipped the pen in the ink, and then hesitated. 

“You shall know where I am leading you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, 
“ before you sign your will. In the mean time, let us gain every 
inch of ground we can, as we go on. I want the will to be all writ- 
ten out before we advance a single step beyond it. Begin your 
third paragraph, Mr. Noel, under the lines which leave me my lega- 
cy of five thousand pounds.” 

She dictated the last momentous sentence of the will (from the 
rough draft in her own possession) in these words : 


NO NAME. 


473 


“ The whole residue of my estate, after payment of my burial ex- 
penses and my lawful debts, I give and bequeath to Rear-Admiral 
Arthur Everard Bartram, my Executor aforesaid; to be by him ap- 
plied to such uses as he may think fit. 

“ Signed, sealed, and delivered, this third day of November, eight- 
een hundred and forty-seven, by Noel Yanstone, the within-named 
testator, as and for his last Will and Testament, in the presence 
of us — ” 

“ Is that all ?” asked Noel Vanstone, in astonishment. 

“ That is enough, sir, to bequeath your fortune to the admiral ; 
and therefore that is all. Now let us go back to the case which we 
have supposed already. Your widow pays her shilling, and sees 
this will. There is the Combe-Raven money left to Admiral Bar- 
tram, with a declaration in plain words that it is his, to use as he 
likes. When she sees this, what does she do ? She sets her trap 
for the admiral. He is a bachelor, and he is an old man. Who is 
to protect him against the arts of this desperate woman ? Protect 
him yourself, sir, with a few more strokes of that pen which has 
done such wonders already. You have left him this legacy in your 
will — which your wife sees. Take the legacy away again, in a let- 
ter — which is a dead secret between the admiral and you. Put the 
will and the letter under one cover, and place them in the admiral’s 
possession, with your written directions to him to break the seal on 
the day of your death. Let the will say what it says now ; and let 
the letter (which is your secret and his) tell him the truth. Say 
that, in leaving him your fortune, you leave it with the request that 
he will take his legacy with one hand from you, and give it with 
the other to his nephew George. Tell him that your trust in this 
matter rests solely on your confidence in his honor, and on your be- 
lief in his affectionate remembrance of your father and yourself. 
You have known the admiral since you were a boy. He has his lit- 
tle whims and oddities ; but he is a gentleman from the crown of his 
head to the sole of his foot ; and he is utterly incapable of proving 
false to a trust in his honor, reposed by his dead friend. Meet the 
difficulty boldly, by such a stratagem as this ; and you save these 
two helpless men from your wife’s snare, one by means of the other. 
Here, on one side, is your will, which gives the fortune to the ad- 
miral, and sets her plotting accordingly. And there, on the other 
side, is your letter, which privately puts the money into the neph- 
ew’s hands !” 

The malicious dexterity of this combination was exactly the dex- 
terity which Noel Yanstone was most fit to appreciate. He tried to 
express his approval and admiration in words. Mrs. Lecount held 
up her hand warningly, and closed his lips. 


474 


NO NAME. 


“Wait, sir, before you express your opinion,” she went on. 
“ Half the difficulty is all that we have conquered yet. Let us say, 
the admiral has made the use of your legacy which you have pri- 
vately requested him to make of it. Sooner or later, however well 
the secret may be kept, your wife will discover the truth. What 
follows that discovery? She lays siege to Mr. George. All you 
have done is to leave him the money by a roundabout way. There 
he is, after an interval of time, as much at her mercy as if you had 
openly mentioned him in your will. What is the remedy for this ? 
The remedy is to mislead her, if we can, for the second time — to 
set up an obstacle between her and the money, for the protection 
of your cousin George. Can you guess for yourself, Mr. Noel, what 
is the most promising obstacle we can put in her way ?” 

He shook his head. Mrs. Lecount smiled, and startled him into 
close attention by laying her hand on his arm. 

“Put a Woman in her way, sir!” she whispered in her wiliest 
tones. “ We don’t believe in that fascinating beauty of hers — what- 
ever you may do. Our lips don’t burn to kiss those smooth cheeks. 
Our arms don’t long to be round that supple waist. We see through 
her smiles and her graces, and her stays and her padding — she can’t 
fascinate us! Put a woman in her way, Mr. Noel ! Not a woman 
in my helpless situation, who is only a servant, but a woman with 
the authority and the jealousy of a Wife. Make it a condition, in 
your letter to the admiral, that if Mr. George is a bachelor at the 
time of your death, he shall marry within a certain time afterward, 
or he shall not have the legacy. Suppose he remains single in spite 
of your condition, who is to have the money then ? Put a woman 
in your wife’s way, sir, once more — and leave the fortune, in that 
case, to the married sister of your cousin George.” 

She paused. Noel Yanstone again attempted to express his opin- 
ion, and again Mrs. Lecount’s hand extinguished him in silence. 

“ If you approve, Mr. Noel,” she said, “ I will take your approval 
for granted. If you object, I will meet your objection before it is 
out of your mouth. You may say : Suppose this condition is suffi- 
cient to answer the purpose, why hide it in a private letter to the 
admiral ? Why not openly write it down, with my cousin’s name, 
in the will ? Only for one reason, sir. Only because the secret way 
is the sure way, with such a woman as your wife. The more secret 
you can keep your intentions, the more time you force her to waste 
in finding them out for herself. That time which she loses, is time 
gained from her treachery by the admiral — time gained by Mr. 
George (if he is still a bachelor) for his undisturbed choice of a lady 
— time gained, for her own security, by the object of his choice, 
who might otherwise be the first object of your wife’s suspicion and 
your wife’s hostility. Remember the bottle we have discovered up 


NO NAME. 


475 


stairs; and keep this desperate woman ignorant, and therefore 
harmless, as long as you can. There is my advice, Mr. Noel, in the 
fewest and plainest words. What do you say, sir ? Am I almost as 
clever in my way as your friend Mr. Bygrave? Can I, too, conspire 
a little, when the object of my conspiracy is to assist your wishes 
and to protect your friends ?” 

Permitted the use of his tongue at last, Noel Yanstone’s admira- 
tion of Mrs. Lecount expressed itself in terms precisely similar to 
those which he had used on a former occasion, in paying his com- 
pliments to Captain Wragge. “ What a head you have got !” were 
the grateful words which he had once spoken to Mrs. Lecount’s bit- 
terest enemy. “ What a head you have got !” were the grateful 
words which he now spoke again to Mrs. Lecount herself. So do 
extremes meet ; and such is sometimes the all-embracing capacity 
of the approval of a fool ! 

“ Allow my head, sir, to deserve the compliment which you have 
paid to it,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ The letter to the admiral is not 
written yet. Your will there is a body without a soul — an Adam 
without an Eve — until the letter is completed and laid by its side. 
A little more dictation on my part, a little more writing on yours, 
and our work is done. Pardon me. The letter will be longer 
than the will ; we must have larger paper than the note-paper this 
time.” 

The writing-case was searched, and some letter-paper was found 
in it of the size required. Mrs. Lecount resumed her dictation ; 
and Noel Yanstone resumed his pen. 

“Baliol Cottage, Dumfries, 

“Private. “November 3d, 184?. 

“ Dear Admiral Bartram, — When you open my Will (in which 
you are named my sole executor), you will find that I have be- 
queathed the whole residue of my estate — after payment of one lega- 
cy of five thousand pounds — to yourself. It is the purpose of my 
letter to tell you privately what the object is for which I have left 
you the fortune which is now placed in your hands. 

“ I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended, under cer- 
tain conditions, to be given by you to your nephew George. If 
your nephew is married at the time of my death, and if his wife is 
living, I request you to put him at once in possession of your lega- 
cy ; accompanying it by the expression of my desire (which I am 
sure he will consider a sacred and binding obligation on him) that 
he will settle the money on his wife — and on his children, if he has 
any. If, on the other hand, he is unmarried at the time of my 
death, or if he is a widower — in either of those cases, I make it a 
condition of his receiving the legacy, that he shall be married with- 
in the period of-—” 


476 


NO NAME. 


Mrs. Lecount laid down the Draft letter from which she had been 
dictating thus far, and informed Noel Yanstone by a sign that his 
pen might rest. 

“We have come to the question of time, sir,” she observed. 
“ How long will you give your cousin to marry, if he is single, or a 
widower, at the time of your death ?” 

“ Shall I give him a year ?” inquired Noel Vanstone. 

“ If we had nothing to consider but the interests of Propriety,” 
said Mrs. Lecount, “ I should say a year too, sir — especially if Mr. 
George should happen to be a widower. But we have your wife to 
consider, as well as the interests of Propriety. A year of delay, be- 
tween your death and your cousin’s marriage, is a dangerously long 
time to leave the disposal of your fortune in suspense. Give a de- 
termined woman a year to plot and contrive in, and there is no say- 
ing what she may not do.” 

“ Six months ?” suggested Noel Yanstone. 

“ Six months, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “ is the preferable time 
of the two. A six months’ interval from the day of your death is 
enough for Mr. George. You look discomposed, sir; what is the 
matter ?” 

“ I wish you wouldn’t talk so much about my death,” he broke 
out, petulantly. “I don’t like it! I hate the very sound of the 
word !” 

Mrs. Lecount smiled resignedly, and referred to her Draft. 

“ I see the word ‘ decease ’ written here,” she remarked. “ Per- 
haps, Mr. Noel, you would prefer it ?” 

“Yes,” he said; “I prefer ‘Decease.’ It doesn’t sound so dread- 
ful as ‘ Death.’ ” 

“ Let us go on with the letter, sir.” 

She resumed her dictation, as follows : 

“ in either of those cases, I make it a condition of his re- 

ceiving the legacy that he shall be married within the period of Six 
calendar months from the day of my decease ; that the woman he 
marries shall not be a widow ; and that his marriage shall be a mar- 
riage by Banns, publicly celebrated in the parish church of Ossory — 
where he has been known from his childhood, and where the fam- 
ily and circumstances of his future wife are likely to be the subject 
of public interest and inquiry.” 

“ This,” said Mrs. Lecount, quietly looking up from the Draft, “ is 
to protect Mr. George, sir, in case the same trap is set for him which 
was successfully set for you. She will not find her false character 
and her false name fit quite so easily next time — no, not even with 
Mr. Bygrave to help her ! Another dip of ink, Mr. Noel ; let us 
write the next paragraph. Are you ready ?” 


NO NAME. 


477 


“ Yes.” 

Mrs. Lecount went on : 

“ If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions — that is 
to say, if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my 
decease, he fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed 
him to marry, within Six calendar months from that time — it is my 
desire that he shall not receive the legacy, or any part of it. I re- 
quest you, in the case here supposed, to pass him over altogether ; 
and to give the fortune left you in my will to his married sister, 
Mrs. Girdlestone. 

“ Having now put you in possession of my motives and inten- 
tions, I come to the next question which it is necessary to consider. 
If, when you open this letter, your nephew is an unmarried man, it 
is clearly indispensable that he should know of the conditions here 
imposed on him, as soon, if possible, as you know of them yourself. 
Are you, under these circumstances, freely to communicate to him 
what I have here written to you ? Or are you to leave him under 
the impression that no such private expression of my wishes as this 
is in existence ; and are you to state all the conditions relating to 
his marriage, as if they emanated entirely from yourself? 

“ If you will adopt this latter alternative, you w T ill add one more 
to the many obligations under which your friendship has placed me. 

“ I have serious reason to believe that the possession of my mon- 
ey, and the discovery of any peculiar arrangements relating to the 
disposal of it, will be objects (after my decease) of the fraud and 
conspiracy of an unscrupulous person. I am therefore anxious — for 
your sake, in the first place — that no suspicion of the existence of 
this letter should be conveyed to the mind of the person to whom 
I allude. And I am equally desirous — for Mrs. Girdlestone’s sake, 
in the second place — that this same person should be entirely igno- 
rant that the legacy will pass into Mrs. Girdlestone’s possession, if 
your nephew is not married in the given time. I know George’s 
easy, pliable disposition ; I dread the attempts that will be made to 
practice on it ; and I feel sure that the prudent course will be, to 
abstain from trusting him with secrets, the rash revelation of which 
might be followed by serious, and even dangerous results. 

“ State the conditions, therefore, to your nephew, as if they were 
your own. Let him think they have been suggested to your mind 
by the new responsibilities imposed on you as a man of property, 
by your position in my will, and by your consequent anxiety to pro- 
vide for the perpetuation of the family name. If these reasons are 
not sufficient to satisfy him, there can be no objection to your re- 
ferring him, for any further exnlanations which he may desire, to 
his wedding-day. 


478 


NO NAME. 

“ I have done. My last wishes are now confided to you, in im- 
plicit reliance on your honor, and on your tender regard for the 
memory of your friend. Of the miserable circumstances which 
compel me to write as I have written here, I say nothing. You 
will hear of them, if my life is spared, from my own lips — for you 
will be the first friend whom I shall consult in my difficulty and 
distress. Keep this letter strictly secret, and strictly in your own 
possession, until my requests are complied with. Let no human be- 
ing but yourself know where it is, on any pretense whatever. 

“ Believe me, dear Admiral Bartram, affectionately yours, 

“ Noel Vanstone.” 

“ Have you signed, sir ?” asked Mrs. Lecount. “ Let me look the 
letter over, if you please, before we seal it up.” 

She read the letter carefully. In Noel Vanstone’s close, cramped 
handwriting, it filled two pages of letter-paper, and ended at the 
top of the third page. Instead of using an envelope, Mrs. Lecount 
folded it, neatly and securely, in the old-fashioned way. She lit the 
taper in the inkstand, and returned the letter to the writer. 

“ Seal it, Mr. Noel,” she said, u with your own hand, and your own 
seal.” She extinguished the taper, and handed him the pen again. 
“ Address the letter, sir,” she proceeded, “ to Admiral Bartram , St. 
Crux-in-the-Marsh , Essex. Now add these words, and sign them, 
above the address : To be kept in your own possession , and to be open- 
ed by yourself only , on the day of my death — or ‘ Decease,’ if you pre- 
fer it — Noel Vanstone. Have you done ? Let me look at it again. 
Quite right in every particular. Accept my congratulations, sir. 
If your wife has not plotted her last plot for the Combe -Haven 
money, it is not your fault, Mr. Noel — and not mine !” 

Finding his attention released by the completion of the letter, 
Noel Vanstone reverted at once to purely personal considerations. 
“ There is my packing-up to be thought of now,” he said. u I can’t 
go away without my warm things.” 

“ Excuse me, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Lecount, “ there is the Will to be 
signed first ; and there must be two persons found to witness your 
signature.” She looked out of the front window, and saw the car- 
riage waiting at the door. “ The coachman will do for one of the 
witnesses,” she said. “ He is in respectable service at Dumfries, and 
he can be found if he happens to be wanted. We must have one 
of your own servants, I suppose, for the other witness. They are all 
detestable women ; but the cook is the least ill-looking of the three. 
Send for the cook, sir, while I go out and call the coachman. When 
we have got our witnesses here, you have only to speak to them in 
these words : ‘ I have a document here to sign, and I wish you to 
write your names on it, as witnesses of my signature.’ Nothing 


NO NAME. 


479 


more, Mr. Noel ! Say those few words in your usual manner — and, 
when the signing is over, I will see myself to your packing-up, and 
your w T arm things.” 

She went to the front door, and summoned the coachman to the 
parlor. On her return, she found the cook already in the room. 
The cook looked mysteriously offended, and stared without inter 
mission at Mrs. Lecount. In a minute more the coachman — an 
elderly man — came in. He was preceded by a relishing odor of 
whisky ; but his head was Scotch ; and nothing but his odor be- 
trayed him. 

“ I have a document here to sign,” said Noel Yanstone, repeating 
his lesson ; “ and I wish you to write your names on it, as witnesses 
of my signature.” 

The coachman looked at the will. The cook never removed her 
eyes from Mrs. Lecount. 

“ Ye’ll no object, sir,” said the coachman, with the national cau- 
tion showing itself in every wrinkle on his face — “ ye’ll no object, 
sir, to tell me, first, what the Doecument may be ?” 

Mrs. Lecount interposed before Noel Yanstone’s indignation could 
express itself in words. 

“You must tell the man, sir, that this is your Will,” she said. 
“ When he witnesses your signature, he can see as much for himself 
if he looks at the top of the page.” 

“ Ay, ay,” said the coachman, looking at the top of the page im- 
mediately. “ His last Wull and Testament. Hech, sirs ! there’s a 
sair confronting of Death in a Doecument like yon! A’ flesh is 
grass,” continued the coachman, exhaling an additional puff of 
whisky, and looking up devoutly at the ceiling. “Tak’ those 
words in connection with that other Screepture: Many are ca’ad, 
but few are chosen. Tak’ that again, in connection with Rev’la- 
tions, Chapter the First, verses One to Fefteen. Lay the whole 
to heart; and what’s your Walth, then? Dross, sirs ! And your 
body ? (Screepture again.) Clay for the potter ! And your life ? 
(Screepture once more.) The Breeth o’ your Nostrils !” 

The cook listened as if the cook was at church ; but she never 
removed her eyes from Mrs. Lecount. 

“ You had better sign, sir. This is apparently some custom prev- 
alent in Dumfries during the transaction of business,” said Mrs. Le- 
count, resignedly. “ The man means well, I dare say.” 

She added those last words in a soothing tone, for she saw that 
Noel Yanstone’s indignation was fast merging into alarm. The 
coachman’s outburst of exhortation seemed to have inspired him 
with fear, as well as disgust. 

He dipped the pen in the ink, and signed the Will without utter 
ing a word. The coachman (descending instantly from Theology 


480 


NO NAME. 


to Business) watched the signature with the most scrupulous atten 
tion ; and signed his own name as witness, with an implied com 
mentary on the proceeding, in the form of another puff of whisky, 
exhaled through the medium of a heavy sigh. The cook looked 
away from Mrs. Lecount with an effort — signed her name in a vio- 
lent hurry — and looked back again with a start, as if she expected 
to see a loaded pistol (produced in the interval) in the housekeeper’s 
hands. “ Thank you,” said Mrs. Lecount, in her friendliest manner. 
The cook shut up her lips aggressively and looked at her master. 
“You may go!” said her master. The cook coughed contemptu- 
ously, and went. 

“We sha’n’t keep you long,” said Mrs. Lecount, dismissing the 
coachman. “ In half an hour, or less, we shall be ready for the 
journey back.” 

The coachman’s austere countenance relaxed for the first time. 
He smiled mysteriously, and approached Mrs. Lecount on tiptoe. 

“ Ye’ll no forget one thing, my leddy,” he said, with the most in- 
gratiating politeness. “ Ye’ll no forget the witnessing as weel as 
the driving, when ye pay me for my day’s wark !” He laughed with 
guttural gravity ; and, leaving his atmosphere behind him, stalked 
out of the room. 

“Lecount,” said Noel Yanstone, as soon as the coachman closed 
the door, “ did I hear you tell that man we should be ready in half 
an hour ?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Are you blind ?” 

He asked the question with an angry stamp of his foot. Mrs. Le- 
count looked at him in astonishment. 

“ Can’t you see the brute is drunk ?” he went on, more and more 
irritably. “ Is my life nothing ? Am I to be left at the mercy of a 
drunken coachman ? I won’t trust that man to drive me, for any 
consideration under heaven ! I’m surprised you could think of it, 
Lecount.” 

“ The man has been drinking, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “ It is easy 
to see and to smell that. But he is evidently used to drinking. If 
he is sober enough to walk quite straight — which he certainly does 
— and to sign his name in an excellent handwriting — which you 
may see for yourself on the Will — I venture to think he is sober 
enough to drive us to Dumfries.” 

“Nothing of the sort! You’re a foreigner, Lecount; you don’t 
understand these people. They drink whisky from morning to 
night. Whisky is the strongest spirit that’s made ; whisky is noto- 
rious for its effect on the brain. I tell you, I won’t run the risk. I 
never was driven, and I never will be driven, by any body but a 
aober man.” 


NO NAME. 


481 


“ Must I go back to Dumfries by myself, sir ?” 

“ And leave me here ? Leave me alone in this house after what 
has happened ? How do I know my wife may not come back to- 
night ? How do I know her journey is not a blind to mislead me ? 
Have you no feeling, Lecount ? Can you leave me in my miserable 
situation — ?” He sank into a chair and burst out crying over his own 
idea, before he had completed the expression of it in words. “ Too 
bad !” he said, with his handkerchief over his face — “ too bad I” 

It was impossible not to pity him. If ever mortal was pitiable, he 
was the man. He had broken down at last, under the conflict of 
violent emotions which had been roused in him since the morning. 
The effort to follow Mrs. Lecount along the mazes of intricate com- 
bination through which she had steadily led the way, had upheld 
him while that effort lasted : the moment it was at an end, he 
dropped. The coachman had hastened a result — of which the 
coachman was far from being the cause. 

“You surprise me — you distress me, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “I 
entreat you to compose yourself. I will stay here, if you wish it, 
with pleasure — I will stay here to-night, for your sake. You want 
rest and quiet after this dreadful day. The coachman shall be in- 
stantly sent away, Mr. Noel. I will give him a note to the landlord 
of the hotel, and the carriage shall come back for us to-morrow 
morning, with another man to drive it.” 

The prospect which those words presented cheered him. He 
wiped his eyes, and kissed Mrs. Lecount’s hand. 

“Yes!” he said, faintly ; “send the coachman away — and you 
stop here. You good creature ! You excellent Lecount ! Send 
the drunken brute away, and come back directly. We will be 
comfortable by the fire, Lecount — and have a nice little dinner — 
and try to make it like old times.” His weak voice faltered ; he 
returned to the fireside, and melted into tears again under the pa- 
thetic influence of his own idea. 

Mrs. Lecount left him for a minute to dismiss the coachman. 
When she returned to the parlor, she found him with his hand on 
the bell. 

“ What do you want, sir ?” she asked. 

“ I want to tell the servants to get your room ready,” he answered. 
“ I wish to show you every attention, Lecount.” 

“ You are all kindness, Mr. Noel ; but wait one moment. It may 
be well to have these papers put out of the way before the servant 
comes in again. If you will place the Will and the Sealed Letter 
together in one envelope — and if you will direct it to the admiral — - 
I will take care that the inclosure so addressed is safely placed in 
his own hands. Will you come to the table, Mr. Noel, only for one 
minute more ?” 


482 


NO NAME. 


No ! He was obstinate ; he refused to move from the fire ; he was 
sick and tired of writing; he wished he had never been born, and 
he loathed the sight of pen and ink. All Mrs. Lecount’s patience 
and all Mrs. Lecount’s persuasion were required to induce him to 
write the admiral’s address for the second time. She only succeed- 
ed by bringing the blank envelope to him upon the paper-case, and 
putting it coaxingly on his lap. He grumbled, he even swore, but 
he directed the envelope at last, in these terms: “To Admiral Bar- 
tram, St. Crux -in -the -Marsh. Favored by Mrs. Lecount.” With 
that final act of compliance, his docility came to an end. He refused, 
in the fiercest terms, to seal the envelope. 

There was no need to press this proceeding on him. His seal lay 
ready on the table ; and it mattered nothing whether he used it, or 
whether a person in his confidence used it for him. Mrs. Lecount 
sealed the envelope, with its two important inclosures placed safely 
inside. 

She opened her traveling-bag for the last time, and pausing for a 
moment before she put the sealed packet away, looked at it with a 
triumph too deep for words. She smiled as she dropped it into the 
bag. Not the shadow of a suspicion that the Will might contain 
superfluous phrases and expressions which no practical lawyer 
would have used ; not the vestige of a doubt whether the Letter 
was quite as complete a document as a practical lawyer might have 
made it, troubled her mind. In blind reliance — born of her hatred 
for Magdalen and her hunger for revenge — in blind reliance on her 
own abilities, and on her friend’s law, she trusted the future implic- 
itly to the promise of the morning’s work. 

As she locked her traveling-bag, Noel Vanstone rang the bell. 
On this occasion, the summons was answered by Louisa. 

“ Get the spare room ready,” said her master ; “ this lady will 
sleep here to-night. And air my warm things ; this lady and I are 
going away to-morrow morning.” 

The civil and submissive Louisa received her orders in sullen 
silence — darted an angry look at hei master’s impenetrable guest — 
and left the room. The servants were evidently all attached to 
their mistress’s interests, and were all of one opinion on the subject 
of Mrs. Lecount. 

“That’s done!” said Noel Vanstone, with a sigh of infinite relief. 
“ Come and sit down, Lecount. Let’s be comfortable — let’s gossip 
over the fire.” 

Mrs. Lecount accepted the invitation, and drew an easy-chair to 
his side. He took her hand with a confidential tenderness, and 
held it in his while the talk went on. A stranger, looking in 
through the window, would have taken them for mother and son, 
and would have thought to himself, “ What a happy home !” 


NO NAME. 


483 


The gossip, led by Noel Yanstone, consisted as usual of an endless 
string of questions, and was devoted entirely to the subject of him- 
self and his future prospects. Where would Lecount take him to 
when they went away the next morning ? Why to London ? Why 
should he be left in London, while Lecount went on to St. Crux to 
give the admiral the Letter and the Will % Because his wife might 
follow him, if he went to the admiral’s ? Well, there was something 
in that. And because he ought to be safely concealed from her, 
in some comfortable lodging, near Mr. Loscombe ? Why near Mr. 
Loscombe ? Ah yes, to be sure — to know what the law would do 
to help him. Would the law set him free from the Wretch who 
had deceived him ? How tiresome of Lecount not to know ! 
Would the law say he had gone and married himself a second time, 
because he had been living with the Wretch, like husband and 
wife, in Scotland ? Any thing that publicly assumed to be a mar- 
riage was a marriage (he had heard) in Scotland. How excessively 
tiresome of Lecount to sit there, and say she knew nothing about 
it! Was he to stay long in London by himself, with nobody but 
Mr. Loscombe to speak to? Would Lecount come back to him, 
as soon as she had put those important papers in the admiral’s, 
own hands? Would Lecount consider herself still in his serv- 
ice ? The good Lecount ! the excellent Lecount ! And after all the? 
law-business was over — what then? Why not leave this horrid 
England, and go abroad again ? Why not go to France, to some 
cheap place near Paris ? Say Versailles ? say St. Germain ? In a 
nice little French house — cheap ? With a nice French tonne to> 
cook — who wouldn’t waste his substance in the grease-pot ? With 
a nice little garden — where he could work himself, and get health,, 
and save the expense of keeping a gardener ? It wasn’t a bad idea. 
And it seemed to promise well for the future — didn’t it, Lecount ? 

So he ran on — the poor, weak creature ! the abject, miserable lit- 
tle man ! 

As the darkness gathered, at the close of the short November day, 
he began to grow drowsy — his ceaseless questions came to an end 
at last — he fell asleep. The wind outside sang its mournful winter- 
song; the tramp of passing footsteps, the roll of passing wheels on 
the road, ceased in dreary silence. He slept on quietly. The fire- 
light rose and fell on his wizen little face and his nerveless, droop- 
ing hands. Mrs. Lecount had not pitied him yet. She began to 
pity him now. Her point was gained ; her interest in his will was 
secured ; he had put his future life, of his own accord, under her fos- 
tering care — the fire was comfortable ; the circumstances were favor- 
able to the growth of Christian feeling. “ Poor wretch !” said Mrs. 
Lecount, looking at him with a grave compassion — “ poor wretch !” 

The dinner-hour roused him. He was cheerful at dinner ; he re< 


484 


NO NAME. 


verted to the idea of the cheap little house in France; he smirked 
and simpered ; and talked French to Mrs. Lecount, while the house 
maid and Louisa waited, turn and turn about, under protest. When 
dinner was over, he returned to his comfortable chair before the fire, 
and Mrs. Lecount followed him. He resumed the conversation — 
which meant, in his case, repeating his questions. But he was not 
so quick and ready with them as he had been earlier in the day. 
They began to flag — they continued, at longer and longer intervals 
— they ceased altogether. Toward nine o’clock he fell asleep again. 

It was not a quiet sleep this time. He muttered, and ground his 
teeth, and rolled his head from side to side of the chair. Mrs. Le- 
count purposely made noise enough to rouse him. He woke, with a 
vacant eye and a flushed cheek. He walked about the room rest- 
lessly, with a new idea in his mind — the idea of writing a terrible 
letter; a letter of eternal farewell to his wife. How was it to be 
written ? In what language should he express his feelings ? The 
powers of Shakspeare himself would be unequal to the emergency ! 
He had been the victim of an outrage entirely without parallel. A 
wretch had crept into his bosom ! A viper had hidden herself at 
his fireside ! Where could words be found to brand her with the 
infamy she deserved ? He stopped, with a suffocating sense in him 
of his own impotent rage — he stopped, and shook his fist tremulous- 
ly in the empty air. 

Mrs. Lecount interfered with an energy and a resolution inspired 
by serious alarm. After the heavy strain that had been laid on his 
weakness already, such an outbreak of passionate agitation as was 
now bursting from him might be the destruction of his rest that 
night, and of his strength to travel the next day. With infinite dif- 
ficulty, with endless promises to return to the subject, and to advise 
him about it in the morning, she prevailed on him, at last, to go up 
stairs and compose himself for the night. She gave him her arm to 
assist him. On the way up stairs, his attention, to her great relief, 
became suddenly absorbed by a new fancy. He remembered a cer- 
tain warm and comfortable mixture of wine, egg, sugar, and spices, 
which she had often been accustomed to make for him in former 
times, and which he thought he should relish exceedingly before he 
went to bed. Mrs. Lecount helped him on with his dressing-gown 
— then went down stairs again, to make his warm drink for him at 
the parlor fire. 

She rang the bell, and ordered the necessary ingredients for the 
mixture, in Noel Vanstone’s name. The servants, with the small in- 
genious malice of their race, brought up the materials one by one, 
and kept her waiting for each of them as long as possible. She had 
got the saucepan, and the spoon, and the tumbler, and the nutmeg- 
grater, and the wine — but not the egg, the sugar, or the spices— 





HE WAS DEAD! 





NO NAME. 


487 


when she heard him above, walking backward and forward noisily 
in his room ; exciting himself on the old subject again, beyond all 
doubt. 

She went up stairs once more ; but he was too quick for her — he 
heard her outside the door ; and when she opened it, she found him 
in his chair, with his back cunningly turned toward her. Knowing 
him too well to attempt any remonstrance, she merely announced the 
speedy arrival of the warm drink, and turned to leave the room. On 
her way out, she noticed a table in a corner, with an inkstand and 
a paper-case on it, and tried, without attracting his attention, to take 
the writing materials away. He was too quick for her again. He 
asked, angrily, if she doubted his promise. She put the writing ma- 
terials back on the table, for fear of offending him, and left the room. 

In half an hour more the mixture was ready. She carried it up to 
him, foaming and fragrant, in a large tumbler. “ He will sleep after 
this,” she thought to herself, as she opened the door ; “ I have made 
it stronger than usual on purpose.” 

He had changed his place. He was sitting at the table in the 
corner — still with his back to her, writing. This time his quick 
ears had not served him ; this time she caught him in the fact. 

“ Oh, Mr. Noel ! Mr. Noel !” she said, reproachfully, “ what is your 
promise worth ?” 

He made no answer. He was sitting with his left elbow on the 
table, and with his head resting on his left hand. His right hand 
lay back on the paper, with the pen lying loose in it. “ Your drink, 
Mr. Noel,” she said, in a kinder tone, feeling unwilling to offend him. 
He took no notice of her. 

She went to the table to rouse him. Was he deep in thought ? 

He was dead ! 

THE END OF THE FIFTH SCENE. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 


I. 

From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe. 

“ Park Terrace, St. John’s Wood, November 5th. 

“ Dear Sir, — I came to London yesterday, for the purpose of see- 
ing a relative, leaving Mr. Vanstone at Baliol Cottage, and propos- 
ing to return to him in the course of the week. I reached London 


488 


NO NAME. 


late last night, and drove to these lodgings, having written to se^ 
cure accommodation beforehand. 

“ This morning’s post has brought me a letter from my own maid, 
whom I left at Baliol Cottage, with instructions to write to me if 
any thing extraordinary took place in my absence. You will find 
the girl’s letter inclosed in this. I have had some experience of 
her ; and I believe she is to be strictly depended on to tell the truth. 

“ I purposely abstain from troubling you by any useless allusions 
to myself. When you have read my maid’s letter, you will under- 
stand the shock which the news contained in it has caused me. I 
can only repeat that I place implicit belief in her statement. I am 
firmly persuaded that my husband’s former housekeeper has found 
him out, has practiced on his weakness in my absence, and has pre- 
vailed on him to make another Will. From what I know of this 
woman, I feel no doubt that she has used her influence over Mr. Van- 
stone to deprive me, if possible, of all future interests in my hus- 
band’s fortune. 

“ Under such circumstances as these, it is in the last degree im- 
portant — for more reasons than I need mention here — that I should 
see Mr. Vanstone, and come to an explanation with him, at the ear- 
liest possible opportunity. You will find that my maid thoughtful- 
ly kept her letter open until the last moment before post-time — with- 
out, however, having any later news to give me than that Mrs. Le- 
count was to sleep at the cottage last night, and that she and Mr. 
Vanstone were to leave together this morning. But for that last 
piece of intelligence, I should have been on my way back to Scot- 
land before now. As it is, I can not decide for myself what I ought 
to do next. My going back to Dumfries, after Mr. Vanstone has left 
it, seems like taking a journey for nothing — and my staying in Lon- 
don appears to be almost equally useless. 

“Will you kindly advise me in this difficulty? I will come to 
you at Lincoln’s Inn at any time this afternoon or to-morrow which 
you may appoint. My next few hours are engaged. As soon as 
this letter is dispatched, I am going to Kensington, with the object 
of ascertaining whether certain doubts I feel about the means by 
which Mrs. Lecount may have accomplished her discovery are well 
founded or not. If you will let me have your answer by return of 
post, I will not fail to get back to St. John’s Wood in time to re^ 
ceive it. Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely, 

“Magdalen Vanstone .’ 7 


H. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“Lincoln’s Inn, November 5th. 

“Dear Madam, — Your letter and its inclosure have caused me 


NO NAME. 


489 


great concern and surprise. Pressure of business allows me no hope 
of being able to see you either to-day or to-morrow morning. But 
if three o’clock to-morrow afternoon will suit you, at that hour you 
will find me at your service. 

“ I can not pretend to offer a positive opinion until I know more 
of the particulars connected with this extraordinary business than 
I find communicated either in your letter or in your maid’s. But 
with this reserve, I venture to suggest that your remaining in Lon- 
don until to-morrow may possibly lead to other results besides your 
consultation at my chambers. There is at least a chance that you 
or I may hear something further in this strange matter by the morn- 
ing’s post. I remain, dear madam, faithfully yours, 

“ John Loscombe.” 


III. 

From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Miss Garth. 

“November 5th, two o’clock. 

“I have just returned from Westmoreland House — after purpose- 
ly leaving it in secret, and purposely avoiding you under your own 
roof. You shall know why I came, and why I went away. It is 
due to my remembrance of old times not to treat you like a stran- 
ger, although I can never again treat you like a friend. 

u I set forth on the third from the North to London. My only 
object in taking this long journey was to see Norah. I had been 
suffering for many weary weeks past such remorse as only misera- 
ble women like me can feel. Perhaps the suffering weakened me; 
perhaps it roused some old forgotten tenderness — God knows! — I 
can’t explain it ; I can only tell you that I began to think of Norah 
by day, and to dream of Norah by night, till I was almost heart- 
broken. I have no better reason than this to give for running all 
the risks which I ran, and coming to London to see her. I don’t 
wish to claim more for myself than I deserve ; I don’t wish to tell 
you I was the reformed and repenting creature whom you might 
have approved. I had only one feeling in me that I know of. I 
wanted to put my arms round Norah’s neck, and cry my heart out 
on Norah’s bosom. Childish enough, I dare say. Something might 
have come of it ; nothing might have come of it — who knows ? 

“ I had no means of finding Norah without your assistance. How- 
ever you might disapprove of what I had done, I thought you would 
not refuse to help me to find my sister When I lay down last night 
in my strange bed, I said to myself, ‘ I will ask Miss Garth, for my 
father’s sake and my mother’s sake, to tell me.’ You don’t know 
what a comfort I felt in that thought. How should you? What 
do good women like you know T of miserable sinners like me? All 
you know is that you pray for us at church. 


490 


NO NAME. 


“Well, I fell asleep happily that night — for the first time since 
my marriage. When the morning came, I paid the penalty of dar- 
ing to be happy only for one night. When the morning came, a 
letter came with it, which told me that my bitterest enemy on earth 
(you have meddled sufficiently with my affairs to know what enemy 
I mean) had revenged herself on me in my absence. In following 
the impulse which led me to my sister, I had gone to my ruin. 

u The mischief was beyond all present remedy, when I received 
the news of it. Whatever had happened, whatever might happen, 
I made up my mind to persist in my resolution of seeing Norah be- 
fore I did any thing else. I suspected you of being concerned in 
the disaster which had overtaken me — because I felt positively cer- 
tain at Aldborough that you and Mrs. Lecount had written to each 
other. But I never suspected Norah. If I lay on my death-bed at 
this moment, I could say with a safe conscience I never suspected 
ISTorah. 

“ So I went this morning to Westmoreland House to ask you for 
my sister’s address, and to acknowledge plainly that I suspected 
you of being again in correspondence with Mrs. Lecount. 

u When I inquired for you at the door, they told me you had gone 
out, but that you were expected back before long. They asked me 
if I would see your sister, who was then in the school-room. I de- 
sired that your sister should on no account be disturbed : my busi- 
ness was not with her, but with you. I begged to be allowed to 
wait in a room by myself until you returned. 

“ They showed me into the double room on the ground-floor, di- 
vided by curtains — as it was when I last remember it. There was 
a fire in the outer division of the room, but none in the inner ; and 
for that reason, I suppose, the curtains were drawn. The servant 
w r as very civil and attentive to me. I have learned to be thankful 
for civility and attention, and I spoke to her as cheerfully as I could. 
I said to her, 4 1 shall see Miss Garth here, as she comes up to the 
door, and I can beckon her in through the long window.’ The 
servant said I could do so, if you came that way, but that you let 
yourself in sometimes with your own key by the back-garden gate ; 
and if you did this, she would take care to let you know of my vis- 
it. I mention these trifles, to show you that there was no premedi- 
tated deceit in my mind when I came to the house. 

“ I waited a weary time, and you never came : I don’t know 
whether my impatience made me think so, or whether the large 
fire burning made the room really as hot as I felt it to be — I only 
know that, after a while, I passed through the curtains into the innei 
room, to try the cooler atmosphere. 

“ I walked to the long window which leads into the back garden, 
to look out, and almost at the same time I heard the door opened— 


NO NAME. 


491 


the door of the room I had just left — and your voice and the voice 
of some other woman, a stranger to me, talking. The stranger was 
one of the parlor-boarders, I dare say. I gathered from the first 
words you exchanged together, that you had met in the passage— 
she on her way down stairs, and you on your way in from the back 
garden. Her next question and your next answer informed me 
that this person was a friend of my sister’s, who felt a strong inter- 
est in her, and who knew that you had just returned from a visit to 
Norah. So far, I only hesitated to show myself, because I shrank, 
in my painful situation, from facing a stranger. But when I heard 
my own name immediately afterward on your lips and on hers, 
then I purposely came nearer to the curtain between us, and pur- 
posely listened. 

“ A mean action, you will say ? Call it mean, if you like. What 
better can you expect from such a woman as I am ? 

“ You were always famous for your memory. There is no neces- 
sity for my repeating the words you spoke to your friend, and the 
words your friend spoke to you, hardly an hour since. When you 
read these lines, you will know, as well as I know, what those words 
told me. I ask for no particulars ; I will take all your reasons 
and all your excuses for granted. It is enough for me to know that 
you and Mr. Pendril have been searching for me again, and that 
Norah is in the conspiracy this time, to reclaim me in spite of my- 
self. It is enough for me to know that my letter to my sister has 
been turned into a trap to catch me, and that Mrs. Lecount’s re- 
venge has accomplished its object by means of information received 
from Norah’s lips. 

“ Shall I tell you what I suffered when I heard these things ? 
No ; it would only be a waste of time to tell you. Whatever I suf- 
fer, I deserve it — don’t I ? 

“ I waited in that inner room — knowing my own violent temper, 
and not trusting myself to see you, after what I had heard — I wait- 
ed in that inner room, trembling lest the servant should tell you of 
my visit before I could find an opportunity of leaving the house. 
No such misfortune happened. The servant, no doubt, heard the 
voices up stairs, and supposed that we had met each other in the 
passage. I don’t know how long or how short a time it was before 
you left the room to go and take off your bonnet — you went, and 
your friend went with you. I raised the long window softly, and 
stepped into the back garden. The way by which you returned to 
the house was the way by which I left it. No blame attaches to 
the servant. As usual, where I am concerned, nobody is to blame 
but me. 

“ Time enough has passed now to quiet my mind a little. You 
know how strong I am ? You remember how I used to fight against 


492 


NO NAME. 


all my illnesses when I was a child ? Now I am a woman, I fight 
against my miseries in the same way. Don’t pity me, Miss Garth ! 
Don’t pity me ! 

“ I have no harsh feeling against Norah. The hope I had of see- 
ing her is a hope taken from me ; the consolation I had in writing 
to her is a consolation denied me for the future. I am cut to the 
heart; but I have no angry feeling toward my sister. She means 
well, poor soul — I dare say she means well. It would distress her, 
if she knew what has happened. Don’t tell her. Conceal my visit, 
and burn my letter. 

“ A last word to yourself and I have done : 

“ If I rightly understand my present situation, your spies are still 
searching for me to just as little purpose as they searched at York. 
Dismiss them — you are wasting your money to no purpose. If you 
discovered me to-morrow, what could you do ? My position has 
altered. I am no longer the poor outcast girl, the vagabond public 
performer, whom you once hunted after. I have done what I told 
you I would do — I have made the general sense of propriety my ac- 
complice this time. Do you know who I am ? I am a respectable 
married woman, accountable for my actions to nobody under heav- 
en but my husband. I have got a place in the world, and a name 
in the world, at last. Even the law, which is the friend of all you 
respectable people, has recognized my existence, and has become 
my friend too ! The Archbishop of Canterbury gave me his license 
to be married, and the vicar of Aldborough performed the services 
If I found your spies following me in the street, and if I chose to 
claim protection from them, the law would acknowledge my claim. 
You forget what wonders my wickedness has done for me. It has 
made Nobody’s Child Somebody’s Wife. 

“ If you will give these considerations their due weight ; if you 
will exert your excellent common sense, I have no fear of being 
obliged to appeal to my newly-found friend and protector — the 
law. You will feel, by this time, that you have meddled with me 
at last to some purpose. I am estranged from Norah — I am discov- 
ered by my husband — I am defeated by Mrs. Lecount. You have 
driven me to the last extremity ; you have strengthened me to fight 
the battle of my life with the resolution which only a lost and 
friendless woman can feel. Badly as your schemes have prospered, 
they have not proved totally useless after all ! 

“I have no more to say. If you ever speak about me to Norah, 
tell her that a day may come when she will see me again — the day 
when we two sisters have recovered our natural rights ; the day 
when I put Norah’s fortune into Norah’s hand. 

“ Those are my last words. Remember them the next time you feel 
tempted to meddle with me again. MagdJxen Vanstone.” 


HO NAME. 


493 


r 


IV. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“Lincoln’s Inn, November 6th. 

“ Dear Madam, — This morning’s post has doubtless brought you 
the same shocking news which it has brought to me. You must 
know by this time that a terrible affliction has befallen you — the 
affliction of your husband’s sudden death. 

“ I am on the point of starting for the North, to make all needful 
inquiries, and to perform whatever duties I may with propriety un- 
dertake, as solicitor to the deceased gentleman. Let me earnestly 
recommend you not to follow me to Baliol Cottage, until I have 
had time to write to you first, and to give you such advice as I can 
not, through ignorance of all the circumstances, pretend to offer 
now. You may rely on my writing, after my arrival in Scotland, 
by the first post. I remain, dear madam, faithfully yours, 

“John Loscombe.” 

V. 

From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth. 

“ Serle Street, November 6th. 

“ Dear Miss Garth, — I return you Mrs. Noel Vanstone’s letter. 
I can understand your mortification at the tone in which it is writ- 
ten, and your distress at the manner in which this unhappy woman 
has interpreted the conversation that she overheard at your house. 
I can not honestly add that I lament what has happened. My opin- 
ion has never altered since the Combe-Baven time. I believe Mrs. 
Noel Vanstone to be one of the most reckless, desperate, and per- 
verted women living ; and any circumstances that estrange her 
from her sister are circumstances which I welcome, for her sister’s 
sake. 

“ There can not be a moment’s doubt on the course you ought to 
follow in this matter. Even Mrs. Noel Vanstone herself acknowl- 
edges the propriety of sparing her sister additional and unneces- 
sary distress. By all means, keep Miss Vanstone in ignorance of 
the visit to Kensington, and of the letter which has followed it. It 
would be not only unwise, but absolutely cruel, to enlighten her. 
If we had any remedy to apply, or even any hope to offer, we might 
feel some hesitation in keeping our secret. But there is no remedy, 
and no hope. Mrs. Noel Vanstone is perfectly justified in the view 
she takes of her own position. Neither you nor I can assert the 
smallest right to control her. 

“ I have already taken the necessary measures for putting an end 
to our useless inquiries. In a few days I will write to Miss Van- 
stone, and will do my best to tranquilize her mind on the subject 


494 


NO NAME. 


of her sister. If I can find no sufficient excuse to satisfy her, it will 
be better she should think we have discovered nothing than that 
she should know the truth. Believe me, most truly yours, 

“William Pendril.” 

VL 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“ Private. “Lincoln’s Inn, November 15th. 

u Dear Madam, — In compliance with your request, I now pro- 
ceed to communicate to you in writing what (but for the calamity 
which has so recently befallen you) I should have preferred commu- 
nicating by word of mouth. Be pleased to consider this letter as 
strictly confidential between yourself and me. 

“ I inclose, as you desire, a copy of the Will executed by your 
late husband on the third of this month. There can be no question 
of the genuineness of the original document. I protested, as a mat- 
ter of form, against Admiral Bartram’s solicitor assuming a position 
of authority at Baliol Cottage. But he took the position, neverthe- 
less ; acting as legal representative of the sole Executor under the 
second Will. I am bound to say I should have done the same 
myself in his place. 

“ The serious question follows, What can we do for the best in 
your interests ? The Will executed under my professional superin- 
tendence, on the thirtieth of September last, is at present superseded 
and revoked by the second and later Will, executed on the third of 
November. Can we dispute this document ? 

“ I doubt the possibility of disputing the new Will on the face of 
it. It is no doubt irregularly expressed ; but it is dated, signed, and 
witnessed as the law directs ; and the perfectly simple and straight- 
forward provisions that it contains are in no respect, that I can see, 
technically open to attack. 

“ This being the case, can we dispute the Will on the ground that 
it has been executed when the Testator was not in a fit state to dis 
pose of his own property ? or when the Testator was subjected to un- 
due and improper influence ? 

“ In the first of these cases, the medical evidence would put an 
obstacle in our way. We can not assert that previous illness had 
weakened the Testator’s mind. It is clear that he died suddenly, 
as the doctors had all along declared he would die, of disease of 
the heart. He was out walking in his garden, as usual, on the day 
of his death ; he ate a hearty dinner ; none of the persons in his 
service noticed any change in him; he was a little more irritable 
with them than usual, but that was all. It is impossible to attack 
the state of his faculties : there is no case to go into court with, so 
far. 


NO NAME. 


495 


“ Can we declare that he acted under undue influence ; or, in plain- 
er terms, under the influence of Mrs. Lecount ? 

“ There are serious difficulties, again, in the way of taking this 
course. We can not assert, for example, that Mrs. Lecount has as- 
sumed a place in the will which she has no fair claim to occupy. 
She has cunningly limited her own legacy, not only to what is fairly 
her due, but to what the late Mr. Michael Yanstone himself had the 
intention of leaving her. If I were examined on the subject, I 
should be compelled to acknowledge that I had heard him express 
this intention myself. It is only the truth to say that I have heard 
him express it more than once. There is no point of attack in Mrs. 
Lecount’s legacy, and there is no point of attack in your late hus- 
band’s choice of an executor. He has made the wise choice, and the 
natural choice, of the oldest and trustiest friend he had in the world. 

“ One more consideration remains — the most important which I 
have yet approached, and therefore the consideration which I have 
reserved to the last. On the thirtieth of September, the Testator 
executes a will, leaving his widow sole executrix, with a legacy of 
eighty thousand pounds. On the third of November following, he 
expressly revokes this will, and leaves another in its stead, in which 
his widow is never once mentioned, and in which the whole residue 
of his estate, after payment of one comparatively trifling legacy, is 
left to a friend. 

“It rests entirely with you to say whether any valid reason can 
or can not be produced to explain such an extraordinary proceed- 
ing as this. If no reason can be assigned — and I know of none my- 
self — I think we have a point here which deserves our careful con- 
sideration ; for it may be a point which is open to attack. Pray un- 
derstand that I am now appealing to you solely as a lawyer, who is 
obliged to look all possible eventualities in the face. I have no wish 
to intrude on your private affairs ; I have no wish to write a word 
which could be construed into any indirect reflection on yourself. 

“ If you tell me that, so far as you know, your husband capri- 
ciously struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or mo- 
tive for doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his com 
duct than that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence 
of Mrs. Lecount, I will immediately take Counsel’s opinion touch- 
ing the propriety of disputing the will on this ground. If, on the 
other hand, you tell me that there are reasons (known to yourself, 
though unknown to me) for not taking the course I propose, I will 
accept that intimation without troubling you, unless you wish it, to 
explain yourself further. In this latter event, I will write to you 
again ; for I shall then have something more to say, which may 
greatly surprise you, on the subject of the Will. 

“ Faithfully yours, J ohn Loscombe.” 


496 


NO NAME. 


VII. 

From Mrs . Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe. 

“November 16th. 

“ Dear Sir, — Accept my best thanks for the kindness and con- 
sideration with which you have treated me; and let the anxieties 
under which I am now suffering plead my excuse, if I reply to your 
letter without ceremony, in the fewest possible w r ords. 

u I have my own reasons for not hesitating to answer your ques- 
tion in the negative. It is impossible for us to go to law, as you 
propose, on the subject of the Will. 

“ Believe me, dear sir, yours gratefully, 

“ Magdalen Vanstone.” 


VIII. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“Lincoln’s Inn, November 17th. 

“Dear Madam, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your let- 
ter, answering my proposal in the negative, for reasons of your own. 
Under these circumstances — on wdiich I offer no comment — I beg to 
perform my promise of again communicating with you on the sub- 
ject of your late husband’s Will. 

u Be so kind as to look at your copy of the document. You will 
find that the clause which devises the w T hole residue of your hus- 
band’s estate to Admiral Bartram ends in these terms : to be by him 
applied to such uses as he may thinJc Jit. 

“ Simple as they may seem to you, these are very remarkable 
words. In the first place, no practical lawyer would have used 
them in drawing your husband’s will. In the second place, they 
are utterly useless to serve any plain straightforward purpose. The 
legacy is left unconditionally to the admiral ; and in the same 
breath he is told that he may do what he likes with it ! The phrase 
points clearly to one of two conclusions. It has either dropped 
from the writer’s pen in pure ignorance, or it has been carefully set 
where it appears to serve the purpose of a snare. I am firmly per- 
suaded that the latter explanation is the right one. The w r ords are 
expressly intended to mislead some person — yourself in all probabil- 
ity — and the cunning which has put them to that use is a cunning 
which (as constantly happens when uninstructed persons meddle 
with law) has overreached itself. My- thirty years’ experience reads 
those words in a sense exactly opposite to the sense which they are 
intended to convey. I say that Admiral Bartram is not free to ap- 
ply his legacy to such purposes as he may think fit ; I believe he is 
privately controlled by a supplementary document in the shape of a 
Secret Trust. 


NO NAME. 


497 


“ I can easily explain to you what I mean by a Secret Trust. It 
Is usually contained in the form of a letter from a Testator to his 
Executors, privately informing them of testamentary intentions on 
his part which he has not thought proper openly to acknowledge 
in his will. I leave you a hundred pounds ; and I write a private 
letter enjoining you, on taking the legacy, not to devote it to your 
own purposes, but to give it to some third person, whose name I 
have my own reasons for not mentioning in my will. That is a 
Secret Trust. 

“ If I am right in my own persuasion that such a document as I 
here describe is at this moment in Admiral Bartram’s possession — a 
persuasion based, in the first instance, on the extraordinary words 
that I have quoted to you ; and, in the second instance, on purely 
legal considerations with which it is needless to incumber my letter 
— if I am right in this opinion, the discovery of the Secret Trust 
would be, in all probability, a most important discovery to your 
interests. I will not trouble you with technical reasons, or with 
references to my experience in these matters, which only a profes- 
sional man could understand. I will merely say that I don’t give 
up your cause as utterly lost, until the conviction now impressed on 
my own mind is proved to be wrong. 

“I can add no more, while this important question still remains 
involved in doubt ; neither can I suggest any means of solving that 
doubt. If the existence of the Trust was proved, and if the nature 
of the stipulations contained in it was made known to me, I could 
then say positively what the legal chances were of your being able 
to set up a Case on the strength of it : and I could also tell you 
whether I should or should not feel justified in personally under- 
taking that Case under a private arrangement with yourself. 

“ As things are, I can make no arrangement, and offer no advice. 
I can only put you confidentially in possession of my private opin- 
ion, leaving you entirely free to draw your own inferences from it, 
and regretting that I can not write more confidently and more defi- 
nitely than I have written here. All that I could conscientiously 
say on this very difficult and delicate subject, I have said. 

“ Believe me, dear madam, faithfully yours, 

“ John Loscombe. 

“ P.S. — I omitted one consideration in my last letter, which I may 
mention here, in order to show you that no point in connection with 
the case has escaped me. If it had been possible to show that Mr. 
Yanstone was domiciled in Scotland at the time of his death, we 
might have asserted your interests by means of the Scotch law, 
which does not allow a husband the power of absolutely disinherit- 
ing his wife. But it is impossible to assert that Mr. Yanstone was 
legally domiciled in Scotland. He came there as a visitor only ; he 


498 


NO NAME. 


occupied a furnished house for the season ; and he never expressed, 
either by word or deed, the slightest intention of settling permanent- 
ly in the North.” 

IX. 

From Mrs. Noel Vanstone to Mr. Loscombe. 

“ Dear Sir, — I have read your letter more than once, with the 
deepest interest and attention ; and the oftener I read it, the more 
firmly I believe that there is really such a Letter as you mention in 
Admiral Bartram’s hands. 

“ It is my interest that the discovery should be made, and I at 
once acknowledge to you that I am determined to find the means 
of secretly and certainly making it. My resolution rests on other 
motives than the motives which you might naturally suppose would 
influence me. I only tell you this, in case you feel inclined to re- 
monstrate. There is good reason for what I say, when I assure you 
that remonstrance will be useless. 

“ I ask for no assistance in this matter ; I will trouble nobody for 
advice. You shall not be involved in any rash proceedings on my 
part. Whatever danger there may be, I will risk it. Whatever de- 
lays may happen, I will bear them patiently. I am lonely and 
friendless, and sorely troubled in mind, but I am strong enough to 
win my way through worse trials than these. My spirits will rise 
again, and my time will come. If that Secret Trust is in Admiral 
Bartram’s possession — when you next see me, you shall see me with 
it in my own hands. Yours gratefully, 


“ Magdalen Vanstone.” 


NO NAME. 


499 


THE SIXTH SCENE. 

ST. JOHN’S WOOD. 


CHAPTER I. 

It wanted little more than a fortnight to Christmas; but the 
weather showed no signs yet of the frost and snow, conventionally 
associated with the coming season. The atmosphere was unnatu- 
rally warm, and the old year was dying feebly in sapping rain and 
enervating mist. 

Toward the close of the December afternoon, Magdalen sat alone 
in the lodging which she had occupied since her arrival in London. 
The fire burned sluggishly in the narrow little grate ; the view of 
the wet houses and soaking gardens opposite was darkening fast ; 
and the bell of the suburban muffin-boy tinkled in the distance 
drearil^. Sitting close over the fire, with a little money lying loose 
in her lap, Magdalen absently shifted the coins to and fro on the 
smooth surface of her dress, incessantly altering their positions to- 
ward each other, as if they were pieces of a “ child’s puzzle ” which 
she was trying to put together. The dim fire-light flaming up on 
her faintly from time to time showed changes which would have 
told their own tale sadly to friends of former days. Her dress had 
become loose through the wasting of her figure ; but she had not 
cared to alter it. The old restlessness in her movements, the old 
mobility in her expression, appeared no more. Her face passively 
maintained its haggard composure, its changeless unnatural calm. 
Mr. Pendril might have softened his hard sentence on her, if he had 
seen her now ; and Mrs. Lecount, in the plenitude of her triumph, 
might have pitied her fallen enemy at last. 

Hardly four months had passed since the wedding-day at Aid- 
borough, and the penalty for that day was paid already — paid in 
unavailing remorse, in hopeless isolation, in irremediable defeat! 
Let this be said for her ; let the truth which has been told of the 
fault be told of the expiation as well. Let it be recorded of her 
that she enjoyed no secret triumph on the day of her success. The 
horror of herself with which her own act had inspired her, had 
risen to its climax when the design of her marriage was achieved. 
She had never suffered in secret as she suffered when the Combe- 
Raven money was left to her in her husband’s will. She had never 


500 


NO NAME. 


felt the means taken to accomplish her end so unutterably degrad- 
ing to herself, as she felt them on the day when the end was reach- 
ed. Out of that feeling had grown the remorse which had hurried 
her to seek pardon and consolation in her sister’s love. Never since 
it had first entered her heart, never since she had first felt it sacred 
to her at her father’s grave, had the Purpose to which she had 
vowed herself, so nearly lost its hold on her as at this time. Never 
might Norah’s influence have achieved such good as on the day 
when that influence was lost — the day when the fatal words were 
overheard at Miss Garth’s — the day when the fatal letter from Scot- 
land told of Mrs. Lecount’s revenge. 

The harm was done ; the chance was gone. Time and Hope alike 
had both passed her by. 

Faintly and more faintly the inner voices now pleaded with her 
to pause on the downward way. The discovery which had poison- 
ed her heart with its first distrust of her sister ; the tidings which 
had followed it of her husband’s death ; the sting of Mrs. Lecount’s 
triumph, felt through all, had done their work. The remorse which 
had imbittered her married life was deadened now to a dull de- 
spair. It was too late to make the atonement of confession — too 
late to lay bare to the miserable husband the deeper secrets that 
had once lurked in the heart of the miserable wife. Innodent of all 
thought of the hideous treachery which Mrs. Lecount had imputed 
to her — she was guilty of knowing how his health was broken when 
she married him ; guilty of knowing, when he left her the Combe- 
Raven money, that the accident of a moment, harmless to other men, 
might place his life in jeopardy, and effect her release. His death 
had told her this — had told her plainly what she had shrunk, in 
his lifetime, from openly acknowledging to herself. From the dull 
torment of that reproach ; from the dreary wretchedness of doubt- 
ing every body, even to Norah herself ; from the bitter sense of her 
defeated schemes ; from the blank solitude of her friendless life — 
what refuge was left ? But one refuge now. She turned to the re- 
lentless Purpose which was hurrying her to her ruin, and cried to 
it with the daring of her despair — Drive me on ! 

For days and days together she had bent her mind on the one 
object which occupied it since she had received the lawyer’s letter. 
For days and days together she had toiled to meet the first necessi- 
ty of her position — to find a means of discovering the Secret Trust. 
There was no hope, this time, of assistance from Captain Wragge. 
Long practice had made the old militia-man an adept in the art of 
vanishing. The plow of the moral agriculturist left no furrows — 
not a trace of him was to be found ! Mr. Loscombe was too cautious 
to commit himself to an active course of any kind : he passively 
maintained his opinion, and left the rest to his client — he desired to 


NO NAME. 


501 


know nothing until the Trust was placed in his hands. Magdalen’s 
interests were now in Magdalen’s own sole care. Risk or no risk, 
what she did next she must do by herself. 

The prospect had not daunted her. Alone she had calculated 
the chances that might be tried. Alone she was now determined 
to make the attempt. 

“ The time has come,” she said to herself, as she sat over the fire. 
“ I must sound Louisa first.” 

She collected the scattered coins in her lap, and placed them in a 
little heap on the table, then rose and rang the bell. The landlady 
answered it. 

“ Is my servant down stairs ?” inquired Magdalen. 

“ Yes, ma’am. She is having her tea.” 

“When she has done, say I want her up here. Wait a moment. 
You will find your money on the table — the money I owe you for 
last week. Can you find it ? or would you like to have a candle ?” 

“ It’s rather dark, ma’am.” 

Magdalen lit a candle. “ What notice must I give you,” she ask- 
ed, as she put the candle on the table, “ before I leave ?” 

“ A week is the usual notice, ma’am. I hope you have no objec- 
tion to make to the house ?” 

“ None whatever. I only ask the question, because I may be 
obliged to leave these lodgings rather sooner than I anticipated. 
Is the money right ?” 

“ Quite right, ma’am. Here is your receipt.” 

“ Thank you. Don’t forget to send Louisa to me as soon as she 
has done her tea.” 

The landlady withdrew. As soon as she was alone again, Mag- 
dalen extinguished the candle, and drew an empty chair close to her 
own chair on the hearth. This done, she resumed her former place, 
and waited until Louisa appeared. There was doubt in her face as 
she sat looking mechanically into the fire. “A poor chance,” she 
thought to herself ; “ but, poor as it is, a chance that I must try.” 

In ten minutes more, Louisa’s meek knock was softly audible out- 
side. She was surprised, on entering the room, to find no other 
light in it than the light of the fire. 

“ Will you have the candles, ma’am ?” she inquired, respectfully. 

“We will have candles if you wish for them yourself,” replied 
Magdalen ; “ not otherwise. I have something to say to you. 
When I have said it, you shall decide whether we sit together in 
the dark or in the light.” 

Louisa waited near the door, and listened to those strange words 
in silent astonishment. 

“ Come here,” said Magdalen, pointing to the empty chair ; “ come 
here and sit down.” 


502 


NO NAME. 


Louisa advanced, and timidly removed the chair from its posi- 
tion at her mistress’s side. Magdalen instantly drew it back again. 
“ No !” she said. “ Come closer — come close by me.” After a mo- 
ment’s hesitation, Louisa obeyed. 

“ I ask you to sit near me,” pursued Magdalen, “ because I wish 
to speak to you on equal terms. Whatever distinctions there might 
once have been between us are now at an end. I am a lonely wom- 
an thrown helpless on my own resources, without rank or place in 
the w T orld. I may or may not keep you as my friend. As mistress 
and maid the connection between us must come to an end.” 

“ Oh, ma’am, don’t, don’t say that !” pleaded Louisa, faintly. 

Magdalen sorrowfully and steadily went on. 

“ When you first came to me,” she resumed, “ I thought I should 
not like you. I have learned to like you — I have learned to be 
grateful to you. From first to last you have been faithful and 
good to me. The least I can do in return is not to stand in the 
way of your future prospects.” 

“ Don’t send me away, ma’am !” said Louisa, imploringly. “ If 
you can only help me with a little money now and then, I’ll wait 
for my wages — I will, indeed.” 

Magdalen took her hand and went on, as sorrowfully and as stead- 
ily as before. 

“ My future life is all darkness, all uncertainty,” she said. “ The 
next step I may take may lead me to my prosperity or may lead me 
to my ruin. Can I ask you to share such a prospect as this ? If 
your future was as uncertain as mine is — if you, too, were a friend- 
less woman thrown on the world — my conscience might be easy in 
letting you cast your lot with mine. I might accept your attach- 
ment, for I might feel I was not wronging you. How can I feel 
this in your case ? You have a future to look to. You are an ex- 
oellent servant ; you can get another place — a far better place than 
mine. You can refer to me ; and if the character I give is not con- 
sidered sufficient, you can refer to the mistress you served before 
me — ” 

At the instant when that reference to the girl’s last employer es- 
caped Magdalen’s lips, Louisa snatched her hand away, and started 
up affrightedly from her chair. There was a moment’s silence. 
Both mistress and maid were equally taken by surprise. 

Magdalen was the first to recover herself. 

“ Is it getting too dark ?” she asked, significantly. “ Are you go- 
ing to light the candles, after all ?” 

Louisa drew back into the dimmest corner of the room. 

“ You suspect me, ma’am !” she answered out of the darkness, in 
a breathless whisper. “ Who has told you ? How did you find 
out — ?” She stopped, and burst into tears, “ I deserve your sus- 


NO NAME. 


503 


picion,” she said, struggling to compose herself. “ I can’t deny it 
to you. You have treated me so kindly ; you have made me so fond 
of you ! Forgive me, Mrs. Vanstone — I am a wretch ; I have de- 
ceived you.” 

“ Come here and sit down by me again,” said Magdalen. “ Come 
— or I will get up myself and bring you back.” 

Louisa slowly returned to her place. Dim as the fire-light was, . 
she seemed to fear it. She held her handkerchief over her face, 
and shrank from her mistress as she seated herself again in the 
chair. 

“ You are wrong in thinking that any one has betrayed you to 
me,” said Magdalen. “ All that I know of you is, what your own 
looks and ways have told me. You have had some secret trouble 
weighing on your mind ever since you have been in my service. I 
confess I have spoken with the wish to find out more of you and 
your past life than I have found out yet — not because I am curious, 
but because I have my secret troubles too. Are you an unhappy 
woman, like me ? If you are, I will take you into my confidence. 
If you have nothing to tell me — if you choose to keep your secret — 

I don’t blame you ; I only say, Let us part. I won’t ask how you 
have deceived me. I will only remember that you have been an 
honest and faithful and competent servant while I have employed 
you ; and I will say as much in your favor to any new mistress you 
like to send to me.” 

She waited for the reply. For a moment, and only for a moment, 
Louisa hesitated. The girl’s nature was weak, but not depraved. 
She was honestly attached to her mistress ; and she spoke with a 
courage which Magdalen had not expected from her. 

“ If you send me away, ma’am,” she said, “ I won’t take my char- 
acter from you till I have told you the truth ; I won’t return your 
kindness by deceiving you a second time. Did my master ever tell 
you how he engaged me ?” 

“ No. I never asked him, and he never told me.” 

“ He engaged me, ma’am, with a written character — ” 

“ Yes ?” 

“ The character was a false one.” 

Magdalen drew back in amazement. The confession she heard 
was not the confession she had anticipated. 

“Did your mistress refuse to give vou a character?” she asked. 
“Why?” 

Louisa dropped on her knees, and hid her face in her mistress’s 
lap. “ Don’t ask me !” she said. “ I’m a miserable, degraded crea- 
ture ; I’m not fit to be in the same room with you !” 

Magdalen bent over her, and whispered a question in her ear, 
Louisa whispered back the one sad word of reply. 


504 


NO NAME. 


55 Has he deserted you ?” asked Magdalen, after waiting a moment, 
and thinking first. 

“No.” 

“ Do you love him ?” 

“Dearly.” 

The remembrance of her own loveless marriage stung Magdalen 
to the quick. 

“For God’s sake, don’t kneel to me!” she cried, passionately. 
“ If there is a degraded woman in this room, I am the woman — not 
you !” 

She raised the girl by main force from her knees, and put her 
back in the chair. They both waited a little in silence. Keeping 
her hand on Louisa’s shoulder, Magdalen seated herself again, and 
looked with unutterable bitterness of sorrow into the dying fire. 
“ Oh,” she thought, “ what happy women there are in the world ! 
Wives who love their husbands ! Mothers who are not ashamed to 
own their children ! Are you quieter ?” she asked, gently address- 
ing Louisa once more. “ Can you answer me, if I ask you something 
else ? Where is the child ?” 

“ The child is out at nurse.” 

“ Does the father help to support it ?” 

“ He does all he can, ma’am.” 

“ What is he ? Is he in service ? Is he in a trade ?” 

“ His father is a master-carpenter — he works in his father's yard.” 

“ If he has got work, why has he not married you ?” 

“ It is his father’s fault, ma’am — not his. His father has no pity 
on us. He would be turned out of house and home if he married 
me.” 

“ Can he get no work elsewhere ?” 

“It’s hard to get good work in London, ma’am. There are so 
many in London — they take the bread out of each other’s mouths. 
If we had only had the money to emigrate, he would have married 
me long since.” 

“Would he marry you if you had the money now ?” 

“ I am sure he would, ma’am. He could get plenty of work in 
Australia, and double and treble the wages he gets here. He is try- 
ing hard, and I am trying hard, to save a little toward it — I put by 
all I can spare from my child. But it is so little ! If we live for 
years to come, there seems no hope for us. I know I have done 
wrong every way — I know I don’t deserve to be happy. But how 
could I let my child suffer ? — I was obliged to go to service. My 
mistress was hard on me, and my health broke down in trying to 
live by my needle. I would never have deceived any body by a 
false character, if there had been another chance for me. I was 
alone and helpless, ma’am ; and I can only ask you to forgive me.” 


NO NAME. 


505 


“Ask better women than I am,” said Magdalen, sadly. “I am 
only fit to feel for you, and I do feel for you with all my heart. In 
your place I should have gone into service with a false character 
too. Say no more of the past — you don’t know how you hurt me 
in speaking of it. Talk of the future. I think I can help you, and 
do you no harm. I think you can help me, and do me the greatest 
of all services, in return. Wait, and you shall hear what I mean. 
Suppose you were married — how much would it cost for you and 
your husband to emigrate ?” 

Louisa mentioned the cost of a steerage passage to Australia for a 
man and his wife. She spoke in low, hopeless tones. Moderate as 
the sum was, it looked like unattainable wealth in her eyes. 

Magdalen started in her chair, and took the girl’s hand once more. 

“ Louisa !” she said, earnestly ; “ if I gave you the money, what 
would you do for me in return ?” 

The proposal seemed to strike Louisa speechless with astonish- 
ment. She trembled violently, and said nothing. Magdalen re- 
peated her words. 

“ Oh, ma’am, do you mean it ?” said the girl. “ Do you really 
mean it ?” 

44 Yes,” replied Magdalen ; “ I really mean it. What would you 
do for me in return ?” 

“ Do ?” repeated Louisa. “ Oh what is there I would not do !” 
She tried to kiss her mistress’s hand ; but Magdalen would not per- 
mit it. She resolutely, almost roughly, drew her hand away. 

“ I am laying you under no obligation,” she said. “ We are serv- 
ing each other — that is all. Sit quiet, and let me think.” 

For the next ten minutes there was silence in the room. At the 
end of that time Magdalen took out her watch and held it close to 
the grate. There was just fire-light enough to show her the hour. 
It was close on six o’clock. 

“ Are you composed enough to go down stairs and deliver a mes- 
sage ?” she asked, rising from her chair as she spoke to Louisa again. 
“ It is a very simple message — it is only to tell the boy that I want 
a cab as soon as he can get me one. I must go out immediately. 
You shall know why later in the evening. I have much more to 
say to you ; but there is no time to say it now. When I am gone, 
bring your work up here, and wait for my return. I shall be back 
before bed-time.” 

Without another word of explanation, she hurriedly lit a candle, 
and withdrew into the bedroom to put on her bonnet and shawl. 


506 


NO NAME. 


CHAPTER n. 

Between nine and ten o’clock the same evening, Louisa, waiting 
anxiously, heard the long-expected knock at the house door. She 
ran down stairs at once and let her mistress in. 

Magdalen’s face was flushed. She showed far more agitation on 
returning to the house than she had shown on leaving it. “ Keep 
your place at the table,” she said to Louisa, impatiently ; “ but lay 
aside your work. I want you to attend carefully to what I am go- 
ing to say.” 

Louisa obeyed. Magdalen seated herself at the opposite side of 
the table, and moved the candles, so as to obtain a clear and unin- 
terrupted view of her servant’s face. 

“ Have you noticed a respectable elderly woman,” she began ab- 
ruptly, “ who has been here once or twice in the last fortnight to 
pay me a visit ?” 

“ Yes, ma’am ; I think I let her in the second time she came. An 
elderly person named Mrs. Attwood ?” 

“ That is the person I mean. Mrs. Attwood is Mr. Loscombe’s 
housekeeper ; not the housekeeper at his private residence, but the 
housekeeper at his offices in Lincoln’s Inn. I promised to go and 
drink tea with her some evening this week, and I have been to- 
night. It is strange of me, is it not, to be on these familiar terms 
with a woman in Mrs. Attw r ood’s situation ?” 

Louisa made no answer in words. Her face spoke for her : she 
could hardly avoid thinking it strange. 

“ I had a motive for making friends with Mrs. Attwood,” Magda- 
len went on. u She is a widow, with a large family of daughters. 
Her daughters are all in service. One of them is an under-house- 
maid, in the service of Admiral Bartram, at St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. 
I found that out from Mrs. Attwood’s master; and as soon as I ar- 
rived at the discovery, I privately determined to make Mrs. Att- 
wood’s acquaintance. Stranger still, is it not ?” 

Louisa began to look a little uneasy. Her mistress’s manner was 
at variance with her mistress’s words — it was plainly suggestive of 
something startling to come. 

“ What attraction Mrs. Attwood finds in my society,” Magdalen 
continued, “I can not presume to say. I can only tell you she has 
$een better days ; she is an educated person ; and she may like my 
society on that account. At any rate, she has readily met my ad' 


NO NAME. 


507 


vances toward her. What attraction I find in this good woman, on 
my side, is soon told. I have a great curiosity — an unaccountable 
curiosity, you will think — about the present course of household af- 
fairs at St. Crux-in-the-Marsh. Mrs. Attwood’s daughter is a good 
girl, and constantly writes to her mother. Her mother is proud of 
the letters and proud of the girl, and is ready enough to talk about 
her daughter and her daughter’s place. That is Mrs. Attwood’s at- 
traction to me. You understand, so far ?” 

Yes — Louisa understood. Magdalen went on. 

“ Thanks to Mrs. Attwood and Mrs. Attwood’s daughter,” she 
said, “ I know some curious particulars already of the household at 
St. Crux. Servants’ tongues and servants’ letters — as I need not tell 
you — are oftener occupied with their masters and mistresses than 
their masters and mistresses suppose. The only mistress at St. Crux 
is the housekeeper. But there is a master — Admiral Bartram. He 
appears to be a strange old man, whose whims and fancies amuse 
his servants as well as his friends. One of his fancies (the only one 
we need trouble ourselves to notice) is, that he had men enough 
about him when he was living at sea, and that now he is living on 
shore, he will be waited on by women-servants alone. The one man 
in the house is an old sailor, who has been all his life with his mas- 
ter — he is a kind of pensioner at St. Crux, and has little or noth- 
ing to do with the house-work. The other servants, indoors, are all 
women ; and instead of a footman to wait on him at dinner, the ad- 
miral has a parlor-maid. The parlor-maid now at St. Crux is en- 
gaged to be married, and as soon as her master can suit himself she 
is going away. These discoveries I made some days since. But 
when I saw Mrs. Attwood to-night, she had received another letter 
from her daughter in the interval, and that Tetter has helped me to 
find out something more. The housekeeper is at her wits’ end to 
find a new servant. Her master insists on youth and good looks — 
he leaves every thing else to the housekeeper — but he will have that. 
All the inquiries made in the neighborhood have failed to produce 
the sort of parlor-maid whom the admiral wants. If nothing can be 
done in the next fortnight or three weeks, the housekeeper will ad- 
vertise in the Times ; and will come to London herself to see the 
applicants, and to make strict personal inquiry into their characters.” 

Louisa looked at her mistress more attentively than ever. The 
expression of perplexity left her face, and a shade of disappointment 
appeared there in its stead. 

“ Bear in mind what I have said,” pursued Magdalen ; u and wait 
a minute more, while I ask you some questions. Don’t think you 
understand me yet — I can assure you, you don’t understand me. 
Have you always lived in service as lady’s maid ?” 

“ No, ma’am.” 


508 


NO NAME. 


“ Have you ever lived as parlor-maid ?” 

“ Only in one place, ma’am, and not for long there.” 

“ I suppose you lived long enough to learn your duties ?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“ What were your duties besides waiting at table ?” 

“ I had to show visitors in.” 

“ Yes ; and what else ?” 

“ I had the plate and the glass to look after ; and the table-linen 
was all under my care. I had to answer all the bells, except in the 
bedrooms. There were other little odds and ends sometimes to do — ” 

“But your regular duties were the duties you have just men- 
tioned ?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“ How long ago is it since you lived in service as parlor-maid ?” 

“A little better than two years, ma’am.” 

“I suppose you have not forgotten how to wait at table, and 
clean plate, and the rest of it, in that time ?” 

At this question Louisa’s attention, which had been wandering 
more and more during the progress of Magdalen’s inquiries, wan- 
dered away altogether. Her gathering anxieties got the better of 
her discretion, and even of her timidity. Instead of answering her 
mistress, she suddenly and confusedly ventured on a question of 
her own. 

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she said. “Did you mean me to 
offer for the parlor-maid’s place at St. Crux ?” 

“You?” replied Magdalen. “Certainly not! Have you forgot- 
ten what I said to you in this room before I went out ? I mean you 
to be married, and to go to Australia with your husband and your 
child. You have not waited as I told you, to hear me explain my- 
self. You have drawn your own conclusions, and you have drawn 
them wrong. I asked a question just now, which you have not an- 
swered — I asked if you had forgotten your parlor-maid’s duties ?” 

“ Oh no, ma’am !” Louisa had replied rather unwillingly thus far. 
She answered readily and confidently now. 

“ Could you teach the duties to another servant ?” asked Magdalen. 

“ Yes, ma’am — easily, if she was quick and attentive.” 

“ Could you teach the duties to Me ?” 

Louisa started, and changed color. “ You, ma’am !” she exclaim- 
ed, half in incredulity, half in alarm. 

“ Yes,” said Magdalen. “ Could you qualify me to take the par- 
lor-maid’s place at St. Crux ?” 

Plain as those words were, the bewilderment which they produced 
in Louisa’s mind seemed to render her incapable of comprehending 
her mistress’s proposal. “You, ma’am !” she repeated, vacantly. 

“ I shall perhaps help you to understand this extraordinary project 


NO NAME. 


509 


of mine,” said Magdalen, “ if I tell you plainly what the object of it 
is. Do you remember what I said to you about Mr. Vanstone’s will 
when you came here from Scotland to join me ?” 

“Yes, ma’am. You told me you had been left out of the will 
altogether. I’m sure my fellow-servant would never have been one 
of the witnesses if she had known — ” 

“Never mind that now. I don’t blame your fellow-servant — I 
blame nobody but Mrs. Lecount. Let me go on with what I was 
saying. It is not at all certain that Mrs. Lecount can do me the 
mischief which Mrs. Lecount intended. There is a chance that my 
lawyer, Mr. Loscombe, may be able to gain me what is fairly my due, 
in spite of the will. The chance turns on my discovering a let- 
ter which Mr. Loscombe believes, and which I believe, to be kept 
privately in Admiral Bartram’s possession. I have not the least 
hope of getting at that letter if I make the attempt in my own per- 
son. Mrs. Lecount has poisoned the admiral’s mind against me, 
and Mr. Yanstone has given him a secret to keep from me. If I 
wrote to him, he would not answer my letter. If I went to his 
house, the door would be closed in my face. I must find my way 
into St. Crux as a stranger — I must be in a position to look about 
the house, unsuspected — I must be there with plenty of time on my 
hands. All the circumstances are in my favor, if I am received into 
the house as a servant ; and as a servant I mean to go.” 

“ But you are a lady, ma’am,” objected Louisa, in the greatest per- 
plexity. “ The servants at St. Crux would find you out.” 

“ I am not at all afraid of their finding me out,” said Magdalen. 
“ I know how to disguise myself in other people’s characters more 
cleverly than you suppose. Leave me to face the chances of dis- 
covery — that is my risk. Let us talk of nothing now but what con- 
cerns you. Don’t decide yet whether you will, or will not, give me 
the help I want. Wait, and hear first what the help is. You are 
quick and clever at your needle. Can you make me the sort of 
gown which it is proper for a servant to wear — and can you alter 
one of my best silk dresses so as to make it fit yourself — in a week’s 
time ?” 

“ I think I could get them done in a week, ma’am. But why am 
I to wear — ?” 

“Wait a little, and you will see. I shall give the landlady her 
week’s notice to-morrow. In the interval, while you are making 
the dresses, I can be learning the parlor-maid’s duties. When the 
house-servant here has brought up the dinner, and when you and I 
are alone in the room — instead of your waiting on me, as usual, I 
will wait on you. (I am quite serious ; don’t interrupt me !) What- 
ever I can learn besides, without hindering you, I will practice care- 
fully at every opportunity. When the week is over, and the dresses 


510 


NO NAME. 


are done, we will leave this place, and go into other lodgings — you 
as the mistress, and I as the maid.” 

“ I should be found out, ma’am,” interposed Louisa, trembling at 
the prospect before her. “ I am not a lady.” 

“And I am,” said Magdalen, bitterly. “ Shall I tell you what a 
lady is ? A lady is a woman who wears a silk gown, and has a 
sense of her own importance. I shall put the gown on your back, 
and the sense in your head. You speak good English ; you are nat- 
urally quiet and self-restrained ; if you can only conquer your timid - 
ity, I have not the least fear of you. There will be time enough 
in the new lodging for you to practice your character, and for me 
to practice mine. There will be time enough to make some more 
dresses — another gown for me, and your wedding-dress (which I 
mean to give you) for yourself. I shall have the newspaper sent 
every day. When the advertisement appears, I shall answer it — in 
any name I can take on the spur of the moment ; in your name, if 
you like to lend it to me ; and when the housekeeper asks me for 
my character, I shall refer her to you. She will see you in the posi- 
tion of mistress, and me in the position of maid — no suspicion can 
possibly enter her mind, unless you put it there. If you only have 
the courage to follow my instructions, and to say what I shall tell 
you to say, the interview will be over in ten minutes.” 

“ You frighten me, ma’am,” said Louisa, still trembling. “ You 
take my breath away with surprise. Courage ! Where shall I find 
courage ?” 

“Where I keep it for you,” said Magdalen — “in the passage- 
money to Australia. Look at the new prospect which gives you a 
husband, and restores you to your child — and you will find your 
courage there.” 

Louisa’s sad face brightened ; Louisa’s faint heart beat quick. A 
spark of her mistress’s spirit flew up into her eyes as she thought of 
the golden future. 

“ If you accept my proposal,” pursued Magdalen, “ you can be 
asked in church at once, if you like. I promise you the money on 
the day when the advertisement appears in the newspaper. The 
risk of the housekeeper’s rejecting me is my risk — not yours. My 
good looks are sadly gone off, I know. But I think I can still hold 
my place against the other servants — I think I can still look the par- 
lor-maid whom Admiral Bartram wants. There is nothing for you 
to fear in this matter ; I should not have mentioned it if there had 
been. The only danger is the danger of my being discovered at St. 
Crux, and that falls entirely on me. By the time I am in the ad- 
miral’s house you will be married, and the ship will be taking you 
to your new life.” 

Louisa’s face, now brightening with hope, now clouding again 
with fear, showed plain signs of the struggle which it cost her to 


NO NAME. 


511 


decide. She tried to gain time ; she attempted confusedly to speak 
a few words of gratitude ; but her mistress silenced her. 

“ You owe me no thanks,” said Magdalen. “ I tell you again, we 
are only helping each other. I have very little money, but it is 
enough for your purpose, and I give it you freely. I have led a 
wretched life; I have made others wretched about me. I can’t 
even make you happy, except by tempting you to a new deceit. 
There! there! it’s not your fault. Worse women than you are will 
help me, if you refuse. Decide as you like, but don’t be afraid of 
taking the money. If I succeed, I shall not want it. If I fail — ” 
She stopped, rose abruptly from her chair, and hid her face from 
Louisa by walking away to the fire-place. 

“ If I fail,” she resumed, warming her foot carelessly at the fender, 
“ all the money in the world will be of no use to me. Never mind 
why — never mind Me — think of yourself. I won’t take advantage of 
the confession you have made to me ; I won’t influence you against 
your will. Do as you yourself think best. But remember one thing 
— my mind is made up ; nothing you^can say or do will change it.” 

Her sudden removal from the table, the altered tones of her voice 
as she spoke the last words, appeared to renew Louisa’s hesitation. 
She clasped her hands together in her lap, and wrung them hard. 
“ This has come on me very suddenly, ma’am,” said the girl. “ I 
am sorely tempted to say Yes; and yet I’m almost afraid — ” 

“ Take the night to consider it,” interposed Magdalen, keeping 
her face persistently turned toward the fire ; “ and tell me what you 
have decided to do, when you come into my room to-morrow morn- 
ing. I shall want no help to-night — I can undress myself. You are 
not so strong as I am ; you are tired, I dare say. Don’t sit up on 
my account. Good-night, Louisa, and pleasant dreams !” 

Her voice sank lower and lower as she spoke those kind words. 
She sighed heavily, and, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece, laid 
her head on it with a reckless weariness miserable to see. Louisa 
had not left the room, as she supposed — Louisa came softly to her 
side, and kissed her hand. Magdalen started ; but she made no at- 
tempt, this time, to draw her hand away. The sense of her own 
horrible isolation subdued her, at the touch of the servant’s lips. 
Her proud heart melted ; her eyes filled with burning tears. “ Don’t 
distress me !” she said, faintly. “ The time for kindness has gone 
by ; it only overpowers me now. Good-night 1” 

When the morning came, the affirmative answer which Magdalen 
had anticipated was the answer given. 

On that day the landlady received her week’s notice to quit, and 
Louisa’s needle flew fast through the stitches of the parlor-maid’s 
dress. 

THE END OF THE SIXTH SCENE. 


512 


NO NAME. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 


I. 

From Miss Garth to Mr. Pendril. 

“ Westmoreland House, January 3d, 1848. 

“Dear Mr. Pendril, — I write, as you kindly requested, to re* 
port how Norah is going on, and to tell you what changes I see for 
the better in the state of her mind on the subject of her sister. 

“ I can not say that she is becoming resigned to Magdalen’s con- 
tinued silence — I know her faithful nature too well to say it. I can 
only tell you that she is beginning to find relief from the heavy 
pressure of sorrow and suspense in new thoughts and new hopes. I 
doubt if she has yet realized tfds in her own mind ; but I see the re- 
sult, although she is not conscious of it herself. I see her heart 
opening to the consolation of another interest and another love. 
She has not said a word to me on the subject, nor have I said a 
word to her. But as certainly as I know that Mr. George Bartram’s 
visits have lately grown more and more frequent to the family at 
Portland Place — so certainly I can assure you that Norah is finding 
a relief under her suspense, which is not of my bringing, and a hope 
in the future, which I have not taught her to feel. 

“ It is needless for me to say that I tell you this in the strictest 
confidence. God knows whether the happy prospect which seems 
to me to be just dawning will grow brighter or not as time goes on. 
The oftener I see Mr. George Bartram — and he has called on me 
more than once — the stronger my liking for him grows. To my 
poor judgment he seems to be a gentleman in the highest and truest 
sense of the word. If I could live to see Norah his wife, I should 
almost feel that I had lived long enough. But who can discern the 
future ? We have suffered so much that I am afraid to hope. 

“ Have you heard any thing of Magdalen ? I don’t know why or 
how it is ; but since I have known of her husband's death, my old 
tenderness for her seems to cling to me more obstinately than ever. 

“ Always yours truly, Harriet Garth.” 

II. 

From Mr. Pendril to Miss Garth. 

“Serle Street, January 4th, 1848. 

“Dear Miss Garth, — Of Mrs. Noel Yanstone herself I have heard 


NO NAME. 


513 


nothing. But I have learned, since I saw you, that the report of 
the position in which she is left by the death of her husband may 
be depended upon as the truth. No legacy of any kind is bequeath- 
ed to her. Her name is not once mentioned in her husband’s will. 

“ Knowing what we know, it is not to be concealed that this cir- 
cumstance threatens us with more embarrassment, and perhaps with 
more distress. Mrs. Noel Yanstone is not the woman to submit, 
without a desperate resistance, to the total overthrow of all her 
schemes and all her hopes. The mere fact that nothing whatever 
has been heard of her since her husband’s death is suggestive to my 
mind of serious mischief to come. In her situation, and with her 
temper, the quieter she is now, the more inveterately I, for one, dis- 
trust her in the future. It is impossible to say to what violent 
measures her present extremity may not drive her. It is impossible 
to feel sure that she may not be the cause of some public scandal 
this time, which may affect her innocent sister as well as herself. 

“ I know you will not misinterpret the motive which has led me 
to write these lines ; I know you will not think that I am inconsid- 
erate enough to cause you unnecessary alarm. My sincere anxiety 
to see that happy prospect realized to which your letter alludes has 
caused me to write far less reservedly than I might otherwise have 
written. I strongly urge you to use your influence, on every occa- 
sion when you can fairly exert it, to strengthen that growing attach- 
ment, and to place it beyond the reach of any coming disasters, 
while you have the opportunity of doing so. When I tell you that 
the fortune of which Mrs. Noel Yanstone has been deprived is en- 
tirely bequeathed to Admiral Bartram; and when I add that Mr. 
George Bartram is generally understood to be his uncle’s heir — you 
will, I think, acknowledge that I am not warning you without a 
cause. Yours most truly, William Pendril.” 


III. 

From Admiral Bartram to Mrs. Dr alee {housekeeper at St. Crux). 

“ St. Crux, January 10th, 1848. 

“ Mrs. Drake, — I have received your letter from London, stating 
that you have found me a new parlor-maid at last, and that the girl 
is ready to return with you to St. Crux when your other errands in 
town allow you to come back. 

“This arrangement must be altered immediately, for a reason 
which I am heartily sorry to have to write. 

“ The illness of my niece, Mrs. Girdlestone — which appeared to be 
so slight as to alarm none of us, doctors included — has ended fatal- 
ly. I received this morning the shocking news of her death. Her 
husband is said to be quite frantic with grief. Mr. George has al- 
ready gone to his brother-in-law’s, to superintend the last melan- 


514 


NO NAME. 


choly duties, and I must follow him before the funeral takes place. 
We propose to take Mr. Girdlestone away afterward, and to try the 
effect on him of change of place and new scenes. Under these sad 
circumstances, I may be absent from St. Crux a month or six weeks 
at least ; the house will be shut up, and the new servant will not be 
wanted until my return. 

“You will therefore tell the girl, on receiving this letter, that a 
death in the family has caused a temporary change in our arrange- 
ments. If she is willing to wait, you may safely engage her to come 
here in six weeks’ time ; I shall be back then, if Mr. George is not. 
If she refuses, pay her what compensation is right, and so have 
done with her. Yours, Arthur Bartram.” 

IY. 

From Mrs. Drake to Admiral Bartram. 

“January 11th. 

“ Honored Sir, — I hope to get my errands done, and to return 
to St. Crux to-morrow, but write to save you anxiety, in case of 
delay. 

“The young woman whom I have engaged (Louisa by name) is 
willing to wait your time ; and her present mistress, taking an in- 
terest in her welfare, will provide for her during the interval. She 
understands that she is to enter on her new service in six weeks 
from the present date — namely, on the twenty-fifth of February 
next. 

“ Begging you will accept my respectful sympathy under the sad 
bereavement which has befallen the family, 

“ I remain, honored sir, your humble servant, 

“ Sophia Drake.” 



ISO NAME. 


515 


THE SEVENTH SCENE. 

ST. CRUX-IN-THE -MARSH. 


CHAPTER I. 

This is where you are to sleep. Put yourself tidy, and then come 
down again to my room. The admiral has returned, and you will 
have to begin by waiting on him at dinner to-day.” 

With those words, Mrs. Drake, the housekeeper, closed the door ; 
and the new parlor-maid was left alone in her bed-chamber at St. 
Crux. 

That day was the eventful twenty-fifth of February. In barely 
four months from the time when Mrs. Lecount had placed her mas- 
ter’s private Instructions in his Executor’s hands, the one combina- 
tion of circumstances against which it had been her first and fore- 
most object to provide was exactly the combination which had now 
taken place. Mr. Noel Yanstone’s widow and Admiral Bartram’s 
Secret Trust were together in the same house. 

Thus far, events had declared themselves without an exception in 
Magdalen’s favor. Thus far, the path which had led her to St. Crux 
had been a path without an obstacle. Louisa, whose name she had 
now taken, had sailed three days since for Australia, with her hus- 
band and her child ; she was the only living creature whom Magda- 
len had trusted with her secret, and she was by this time out of 
sight of the English land. The girl had been careful, reliable, and 
faithfully devoted to her mistress’s interests to the last. She had 
passed the ordeal of her interview with the housekeeper, and had 
forgotten none of the instructions by which she had been prepared 
to meet it. She had herself proposed to turn the six weeks’ delay, 
caused by the death in the admiral’s family, to good account, by 
continuing the all-important practice of those domestic lessons, on 
the perfect acquirement of which her mistress’s daring strategem 
depended for its success. Thanks to the time thus gained, when 
Louisa’s marriage was over, and the day of parting had come, Mag- 
dalen had learned and mastered, in the nicest detail, every thing 
that her former servant could teach her. On the day when she 
passed the doors of St. Crux she entered on her desperate venture, 
strong in the ready presence of mind under emergencies which her 
later life had taught her, stronger still in the trained capacity that 


516 


NO NAME. 


she possessed for the assumption of a character not her own, strong- 
est of all in her two months’ daily familiarity with the practical du- 
ties of the position which she had undertaken to fill. 

As soon as Mrs. Drake’s departure had left her alone, she unpack- 
ed her box, and dressed herself for the evening. 

She put on a lavender-colored stuff-gown — half-mourning for Mrs. 
Girdlestone; ordered for all the servants, under the admiral’s in- 
structions — a white muslin apron, and a neat white cap and collar, 
with ribbons to match the gown. In this servant’s costume — in the 
plain gown fastening high round her neck, in the neat little white 
cap at the back of her head — in this simple dress, to the eyes of all 
men, not linen-drapers, at once the most modest and the most allur- 
ing that a woman can wear, the sad changes which mental suffering 
had wrought in her beauty almost disappeared from view. In the 
evening costume of a lady, with her bosom uncovered, with her fig- 
ure armed, rather than dressed, in unpliable silk, the admiral might 
have passed her by without notice in his own drawing-room. In 
the evening costume of a servant, no admirer of beauty could have 
looked at her once and not have turned again to look at her for the 
second time. 

Descending the stairs, on her way to the housekeeper’s room, she 
passed by the entrances to two long stone corridors, with rows of 
doors opening on them ; one corridor situated on the second, and 
one on the first floor of the house. “ Many rooms !” she thought, as 
she looked at the doors. “ Weary work searching here for what I 
have come to find !” 

On reaching the ground-floor she was met by a weather-beaten 
old man, who stopped and stared at her with an appearance of great 
interest. He was the same old man whom Captain Wragge had 
seen in the backyard at St. Crux, at work on the model of a ship. 
All round the neighborhood he was known, far and wide, as “ the 
admiral’s coxswain.” His name was Mazey. Sixty years had writ- 
ten their story of hard work at sea, and hard drinking on shore, on 
the veteran’s grim and wrinkled face. Sixty years had proved his 
fidelity, and had brought his battered old carcass, at the end of the 
voyage, into port in his master’s house. 

Seeing no one else of whom she could inquire, Magdalen requested 
the old man to show her the way that led to the housekeeper’s room. 

“ I’ll show you, my dear,” said old Mazey, speaking in the high 
and hollow voice peculiar to the deaf. “ You’re the new maid — eh? 
And a fine-grown girl, too ! His honor, the admiral, likes a parlor- 
maid with a clean run fore and aft. You’ll do, my dear — you’ll do.” 

“You must not mind what Mr. Mazey says to you,” remarked the 
housekeeper, opening her door as the old sailor expressed his ap- 


NO NAME. 


517 


proval of Magdalen in these terms. “ He is privileged to talk as he 
pleases ; and he is very tiresome and sloveuly in his habits ; but he 
means no harm.” 

With that apology for the veteran, Mrs. Drake led Magdalen first 
to the pantry, and next to the linen-room, installing her, with all 
due formality, in her own domestic dominions. This ceremony com- 
pleted, the new parlor-maid was taken up stairs, and was shown the 
dining-room, which opened out of the corridor on the first floor. 
Here she was directed to lay the cloth, and to prepare the table for 
one person only — Mr. George Bartram not having returned with his 
uncle to St. Crux. Mrs. Drake’s sharp eyes watched Magdalen at- 
tentively as she performed this introductory duty ; and Mrs. Drake’s 
private convictions, when the table was spread, forced her to ac- 
knowledge, so far, that the new servant thoroughly understood her 
work. 

An hour later the soup-tureen was placed on the table ; and Mag- 
dalen stood alone behind the admiral’s empty chair, waiting her 
master’s first inspection of her when he entered the dining-room. 

A large bell rang in the lower regions — quick, shambling foot- 
steps pattered on the stone corridor outside — the door opened sud- 
denly — and a tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd 
as to his lips, fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the 
room, with two huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat 
in a violent hurry. The dogs followed him, and placed themselves, 
with the utmost gravity and composure, one on each side of his 
chair. This was Admiral Bartram, and these were the companions 
of his solitary meal. 

“ Ay ! ay ! ay ! here’s the new parlor-maid, to be sure !” he began, 
looking sharply, but not at all unkindly, at Magdalen. “What’s 
your name, my good girl ? Louisa, is it ? I shall call you Lucy, if 
y ou don’t mind. Take off the cover, my dear— I’m a minute or two 
late to-day. Don’t be unpunctual to-morrow on that account; I 
am as regular as clock-work generally. How are you after your 
journey ? Did my spring-cart bump you about much in bringing 
you from the station ? Capital soup this— hot as fire — reminds me 
of the soup we used to have in the West Indies in the year Three. 
Have you got your half-mourning on ? Stand there, and let me see. 
Ah yes, very neat, and nice, and tidy. Poor Mrs. Girdlestone ! Oh 
dear, dear, dear, poor Mrs. Girdlestone ! You’re not afraid of dogs, 
are you, Lucy ? Eh ? What ? You like dogs ? That’s right ! Al- 
ways be kind to dumb animals. These two dogs dine with me ev- 
ery day, except when there’s company. The dog with the black 
nose is Brutus, and the dog with the white nose is Cassius. Did 
you ever hear who Brutus and Cassius were ? Ancient Romans ? 
That’s right — good girl. Mind your book and your needle, and 


518 


NO NAME. 


we’ll get you a good husband one of these days. Take away the 
soup, my dear, take away the soup !” 

This was the man whose secret it was now the one interest of 
Magdalen’s life to surprise ! This was the man whose name had 
supplanted hers in Noel Yanstone’s will ! 

The fish and the roast meat followed ; and the admiral’s talk 
rambled on — now in soliloquy, now addressed to the parlor-maid, 
and now directed to the dogs — as familiarly and as disconnectedly 
as ever. Magdalen observed with some surprise that the companions 
of the admiral’s dinner had, thus far, received no scraps from their 
master’s plate. The two magnificent brutes sat squatted on their 
haunches, with their great heads over the table, watching the prog- 
ress of the meal with the profoundest attention, but apparently ex- 
pecting no share in it. The roast meat was removed, the admiral’s 
plate was changed, and Magdalen took the silver covers off the two 
made-dishes on either side of the table. As she handed the first 
of the savory dishes to her master, the dogs suddenly exhibited a 
breathless personal interest in the proceedings. Brutus gluttonous- 
ly watered at the mouth ; and the tongue of Cassius, protruding in 
unutterable expectation, smoked again between his enormous jaws. 

The admiral helped himself liberally from the dish ; sent Magda- 
len to the side-table to get him some bread ; and, when he thought 
her eye was off him, furtively tumbled the whole contents of his 
plate into Brutus’s mouth. Cassius whined faintly as his fortunate 
comrade swallowed the savory mess at a gulp. “ Hush ! you fool,” 
whispered the admiral. “Your turn next !” 

Magdalen presented the second dish. Once more the old gentle- 
man helped himself largely — once more he sent her away to the 
side-table — once more he tumbled the entire contents of the plate 
down the dog’s throat, selecting Cassius this time, as became a con- 
siderate master and an impartial man. When the next course fol- 
lowed — consisting of a plain pudding and an unwholesome “ cream ” 
— Magdalen’s suspicion of the function of the dogs at the dinner- 
table was confirmed. While the master took the simple pudding, 
the dogs swallowed the elaborate cream. The admiral was plainly 
afraid of offending his cook on the one hand, and of offending his 
digestion on the other — and Brutus and Cassius were the two train- 
ed accomplices who regularly helped him every day off the horns 
of his dilemma. “ Very good ! very good !” said the old gentleman, 
with the most transparent duplicity. “Tell the cook, my dear, a 
capital cream !” 

Having placed the wine and dessert on the table, Magdalen was 
about to withdraw. Before she could leave the room, her master 
called her back. 

“ Stop, stop !” said the admiral ; “ you don’t know the ways of 


NO NAME. 


519 


the house yet, Lucy. Put another wine - glass here, at my right 
hand — the largest you can find, my dear. I’ve got a third dog, who 
comes in at dessert — a drunken old sea-dog who has followed my 
fortunes, afloat and ashore, for fifty years and more. Yes, yes, that’s 
the sort of glass we want. You’re a good girl — you’re a neat, handy 
girl. Steady, my dear ! there’s nothing to be frightened at !” 

A sudden thump on the outside of the door, followed by one 
mighty bark from each of the dogs, had made Magdalen start. 
“ Come in !” shouted the admiral. The door opened ; the tails of 
Brutus and Cassius cheerfully thumped the floor ; and old Mazey 
marched straight up to the right-hand side of his master’s chair. 
The veteran stood there, with his legs wide apart and his balance 
carefully adjusted, as if the dining-room had been a cabin, and the 
house a ship pitching in a sea-way. 

The admiral filled the large glass with port, filled his own glass 
with claret, and raised it to his lips. 

“ Cod bless the Queen, Mazey,” said the admiral. 

“ God bless the Queen, your honor,” said old Mazey, swallowing 
his port, as the dogs swallowed the made-dishes, at a gulp. 

“ How’s the wind, Mazey ?” 

“ West and by Noathe, your honor.” 

“ Any report to-night, Mazey ?” 

“ No report, your honor.” 

u Good-evening, Mazey.” 

“ Good-evening, your honor.” 

The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his 
bow, and walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius 
stretched themselves on the rug to digest mushrooms and made 
gravies in the lubricating heat of the fire. “ For what we have re- 
ceived, the Lord make us truly thankful,” said the admiral. “ Go 
down stairs, my good girl, and get your supper. A light meal, 
Lucy, if you take my advice — a light meal, or you will have the 
nightmare. Early to bed, my dear, and early to rise, makes a par- 
lor-maid healthy and wealthy and wise. That’s the wisdom of your 
ancestors — you mustn’t laugh at it. Good-night.” In those words 
Magdalen was dismissed ; and so her first day’s experience of Ad- 
miral Bartram came to an end. 

After breakfast the next morning, the admiral’s directions to the 
new parlor-maid included among them one particular order which, 
in Magdalen’s situation, it was especially her interest to receive. Iu 
the old gentleman’s absence from home that day, on local business 
which took him to Ossory, she was directed to make herself ac- 
quainted with the whole inhabited quarter of the house, and to 
learn the positions of the various rooms, so as to know where 


520 


NO NAME. 


bells called her when the bells rang. Mrs. Drake was charged with 
the duty of superintending the voyage of domestic discovery, unless 
she happened to be otherwise engaged — in which case any one of 
the inferior servants would be equally competent to act as Mag- 
dalen’s guide. 

At noon the admiral left for Ossory, and Magdalen presented her- 
self in Mrs. Drake’s room, to be shown over the house. Mrs. Drake 
happened to be otherwise engaged, and referred her to the head 
house-maid. The head house-maid happened on that particular 
morning to be in the same condition as Mrs. Drake, and referred 
her to the under-house-maids. The under-house-maids declared 
they were all behindhand and had not a minute to spare — they sug- 
gested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had nothing on earth to do, 
and that he knew the house as well, or better, than he knew his A 
B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret indignation and con- 
tempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal. She had sus- 
pected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that the 
women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among 
them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. Mrs. Drake, as 
she had seen for herself, was really engaged that morning over her 
accounts. But of all the servants under her who had made their 
excuses not one had even affected to be more occupied than usual. 
Their looks said plainly, “ We don’t like you; and we won’t show 
you over the house.” 

She found her way to old Mazey, not by the scanty directions 
given her, but by the sound of the veteran’s cracked and quavering 
voice, singing in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal 
sea-song — “ Tom Bowling.” Just as she stopped among the ram- 
bling stone passages on the basement story of the house, uncertain 
which way to turn next, she heard the tuneless old voice in the dis- 
tance, singing these lines : 

“His form was of the manliest beau-u-u-uty, 

His heart was ki-i-ind and soft; 

Faithful below Tom did his duty, 

But now he’s gone alo-o-o-o-oft- 
But now he’s go-o-o-one aloft!” 

Magdalen followed in the direction of the quavering voice, and 
found herself in a little room looking out on the back yard. There 
sat old Mazey, with his spectacles low on his nose, and his knotty 
old hands blundering over the rigging of his model ship. There 
were Brutus and Cassius digesting before the fire again, and snor- 
ing as if they thoroughly enjoyed it. There was Lord Nelson on 
one wall, in flaming water-colors ; and there, on the other, was a 
portrait of Admiral Bartram’s last flag-ship, in full sail on a sea of 
slate, with a salmon-colored sky to complete the illusion. 


NO NAME. 


521 


“ What, they won’t show you over the House — won’t they ?” said 
old Mazey. “ I will, then ! That head house-maid’s a sour one, my 
dear — if ever there was a sour one yet. You’re too young and good- 
looking to please ’em — that’s what you are.” He rose, took off his 
spectacles, and feebly mended the fire. “ She’s as straight as a pop- 
lar,” said old Mazey, considering Magdalen’s figure in drowsy solilo- 
quy. “ I say she’s as straight as a poplar, and his honor the admiral 
says so too ! Come along, my dear,” he proceeded, addressing him- 
self to Magdalen again. “ I’ll teach you your Pints of the Compass 
first. When you know your Pints, blow high, blow low, you’ll find 
it plain sailing all over the house.” 

He led the way to the door — stopped, and suddenly bethinking 
himself of his miniature ship, went back to put his model away in 
an empty cupboard — led the way to the door again — stopped once 
more — remembered that some of the rooms were chilly — and potter- 
ed about, swearing and grumbling, and looking for his hat. Mag- 
dalen sat down patiently to wait for him. She gratefully contrast- 
ed his treatment of her with the treatment she had received from 
the women. Resist it as firmly, despise it as proudly as we may, 
all studied unkindness — no matter how contemptible it may be — 
has a stinging power in it w T hich reaches to the quick. Magdalen 
only knew how she had felt the small malice of the female servants, 
by the effect which the rough kindness of the old sailor produced 
on her afterward. The dumb welcome of the dogs, when the move- 
ments in the room had roused them from their sleep, touched her 
more acutely still. Brutus pushed his mighty muzzle companion- 
ably into her hand ; and Cassius laid his friendly fore-paw on her 
lap. Her heart yearned over the two creatures as she patted and 
caressed them. It seemed only yesterday since she and the dogs at 
Combe-Raven had roamed the garden together, and had idled away 
the summer mornings luxuriously on the shady lawn. 

Old Mazey found his hat at last, and they started on their explor- 
ing expedition, with the dogs after them. 

Leaving, the basement story of the house, which was entirely de- 
voted to the servants’ offices, they ascended to the first floor, and 
entered the long corridor, with which Magdalen’s last night’s ex- 
perience had already made her acquainted. “ Put your back agin 
this wall,” said old Mazey, pointing to the long wall — pierced at ir- 
regular intervals with windows looking out over a court-yard and 
fish-pond — which formed the right-hand side of the corridor, as 
Magdalen now stood. “ Put your back here,” said the veteran, 
“ and look straight afore you. What do you see ?” — “ The opposite 
wall of the passage,” said Magdalen. — “Ay! ay! what else?” — 
“ The doors leading into the rooms.” — “ What else ?” — “ I see noth- 
ing else.” Old Mazey chuckled, winked, and shook his knotty fore' 


522 


NO NAME. 


finger at Magdalen, impressively. “ You see one of the Pints of the 
Compass, my dear. When you’ve got your back agin this wall, and 
when you look straight afore you, you look Noathe. If you ever 
get lost hereaway, put your back agin the wall, look out straight 
afore you, and say to yourself, 4 1 look Noathe !’ You do that like 
a good girl, and you won’t lose your bearings.” 

After administerirg this preliminary dose of instruction, old 
Mazey opened the first of the doors on the left-hand side of the pas- 
sage. It led into the dining-room, with which Magdalen was al- 
ready familiar. The second room was fitted up as a library ; and 
the third, as a morning-room. The fourth and fifth doors — both 
belonging to dismantled and uninhabited rooms, and both locked — 
brought them to the end of the north wing of the house, and to the 
opening of a second and shorter passage, placed at a right angle to 
the first. Here old Mazey, who had divided his time pretty equal- 
ly during the investigation of the rooms, in talking of “ his honor 
the Admiral,” and whistling to the dogs, returned with all possible 
expedition to the points of the compass, and gravely directed Mag- 
dalen to repeat the ceremony of putting her back against the wall. 
She attempted to shorten the proceedings, by declaring (quite cor- 
rectly) that in her present position she knew she was looking east. 
“ Don’t you talk about the east, my dear,” said old Mazey, proceed- 
ing unmoved with his own system of instruction, “ till you know 
the east first. Put your back agin this wall, and look straight afore 
you. What do you see?” The remainder of the catechism pro- 
ceeded as before. When the end was reached, Magdalen’s in- 
structor was satisfied. He chuckled and winked at her once more. 
“ Now you may talk about the east, my dear,” said the veteran, 
“ for now you know it.” 

The east passage, after leading them on for a few yards only, 
terminated in a vestibule, with a high door in it which faced them 
as they advanced. The door admitted them to a large and lofty 
drawing-room, decorated, like all the other apartments, with valu- 
able old-fashioned furniture. Leading the way across this room, 
Magdalen’s conductor pushed back a heavy sliding-door, opposite 
the door of entrance. “ Put your apron over your head,” said old 
Mazey. “We are coming to the Banketing-Hall now. The floor’s 
mortal cold, and the damp sticks to the place like cockroaches to a 
collier. His honor the admiral calls it the Arctic Passage. I’ve got 
my name for it, too — I call it, Freeze-your-Bones.” 

Magdalen passed through the door- way, and found herself in the 
ancient Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux. 

On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in 
embrasures, and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred 
fret in length. On her right hand, ranged in one long row from 


NO NAME. 


523 


end to end of the opposite wall, hung a dismal collection of black, 
begrimed old pictures, rotting from their frames, and representing 
battle-scenes by sea and land. Below the pictures, midway down 
the length of the wall, yawned a huge cavern of a fire-place, sur- 
mounted by a towering mantel-piece of black marble. The one ob- 
ject of furniture (if furniture it might be called) visible far or near 
in the vast emptiness of the place, was a gaunt ancient tripod of 
curiously chased metal, standing lonely in the middle of the hall, 
and supporting a wide circular pan, filled deep with ashes from an 
extinct charcoal fire. The high ceiling, once finely carved and gilt, 
was foul with dirt and cobwebs ; the naked walls at either end of 
the room were stained with damp ; and the cold of the marble floor 
struck through the narrow strip of matting laid down, parallel with 
the windows, as a foot-path for passengers across the wilderness of 
the room. No better name for it could have been devised than the 
name which old Mazey had found. “ Freeze-your-Bones ” accurate- 
ly described in three words, the Banqueting-Hall at St. Crux. 

“ Do you never light a fire in this dismal place ?” asked Magdalen. 

“ It all depends on which side of Freeze-your-Bones his honor the 
admiral lives,” said old Mazey. “ His honor likes to shift his quar- 
ters, sometimes to one side of the house, sometimes to the other. 
If he lives Noathe of Freeze-your-Bones — which is where you’ve 
just come from — we don’t waste our coals here. If he lives South 
of Freeze-your-Bones — which is where we are going to next — we 
light the fire in the grate and the charcoal in the pan. Every night, 
when we do that, the damp gets the better of us : every morning, 
we turn to again, and get the better of the damp.” 

With this remarkable explanation, old Mazey led the way to the 
lower end of the Hall, opened more doors, and showed Magdalen 
through another suite of rooms, four in number, all of moderate size, 
and all furnished in much the same manner as the rooms in the 
northern wing. She looked out of the windows, and saw the neg- 
lected gardens of St. Crux, overgrown with brambles and weeds. 
Here and there, at no great distance in the grounds, the smoothly 
curving line of one of the tidal streams peculiar to the locality 
wound its way, gleaming in the sunlight, through gaps in the bram- 
bles and trees. The more distant view ranged over the flat eastward 
country beyond, speckled with its scattered little villages ; crossed 
and recrossed by its net- work of “ backwaters and terminated 
abruptly by the long straight line of sea-wall which protects the 
defenseless coast of Essex from invasion by the sea. 

“ Have we more rooms still to see ?” asked Magdalen, turning 
from the view of the garden, and looking about her for another 
door. 

“ No more, my dear— we’ve run aground here, and we may as 


524 


NO NAME. 


well wear round and put back again,” said old Mazey. “ There’** 
another side to the house — due south of you as you stand now — 
which is all tumbling about our ears. You must go out into the gar- 
den if you want to see it ; it’s built off from us by a brick bulk-head, 
t’other side of this wall here. The monks lived due south of us, 
my dear, hundreds of years afore his honor the admiral was born or 
thought of, and a fine time of it they had, as I’ve heard. They sang 
in the church all the morning, and drank grog in the orchard all 
the afternoon. They slept off their grog on the best of feather-beds, 
and they fattened on the neighborhood all the year round. Lucky 
beggars ! lucky beggars !” 

Apostrophizing the monks in these terms, and evidently regret- 
ting that he had not lived himself in those good old times, the vet- 
eran led the way back through the rooms. On the return passage 
across “ Freeze-your-Bones,” Magdalen preceded him. “ She’s as 
straight as a poplar,” mumbled old Mazey to himself, hobbling 
along after his youthful companion, and wagging his venerable 
head in cordial approval. “ I never was particular what nation they 
belonged to ; but I always did like ’em straight and fine grown, and 
I always shall like ’em straight and fine grown, to my dying day.” 

“Are there more rooms to see up stairs, on the second floor?” 
asked Magdalen, when they had returned to the point from which 
they had started. 

The naturally clear distinct tones of her voice had hitherto reached 
the old sailor’s imperfect sense of hearing easily enough. Rather to 
her surprise, he became stone-deaf, on a sudden, to her last question. 

“Are you sure of your Pints of the Compass ?” he inquired. “If 
you’re not sure, put your back agin the wall, and we’ll go all over 
’em again, my dear, beginning with the Noathe.” 

Magdalen assured him that she felt quite familiar, by this time, 
with all the points, the “ Noathe ” included ; and then repeated her 
question in louder tones. The veteran obstinately matched her by 
becoming deafer than ever. 

“ Yes, my dear,” he said, “ you’re right ; it is chilly in these pas- 
sages ; and unless I go back to my fire, my fire'll go out— won’t it ? 
If you don’t feel sure of your Pints of the Compass, come in to me 
and I’ll put you right again.” He winked benevolently, whistled 
to the dogs, and hobbled off. Magdalen heard him chuckle over 
his own success in balking her curiosity on the subject of the sec- 
ond floor. “ I know how to deal with ’em !” said old Mazey to him- 
self, in high triumph. “ Tall and short, native and foreign, sweet- 
hearts and wives — I know how to deal w T ith ’em !” 

Left by herself, Magdalen exemplified the excellence of the old 
sailor’s method of treatment, in her particular case, by ascending 
the stairs immediately, to make her own observations on the sec 


NO NAME. 


525 


ond floor. The stone passage here was exactly similar, except that 
more doors opened out of it, to the passage on the first floor. She 
opened the two nearest doors, one after another, at a venture, and 
discovered that both rooms were* bed-chambers. The fear of being 
discovered by one of the women-servants in a part of the house with 
which she had no concern, warned her not to push her investiga- 
tions on the bedroom floor too far at starting. She hurriedly walk- 
ed down the passage to see where it ended, discovered tha;t it came 
to its termination in a lumber-room, answering to the position of 
the vestibule down stairs, and retraced her steps immediately. 

On her way back she noticed an object which had previously es- 
caped her attention. It was a low truckle-bed, placed parallel with 
the wall, and close to one of the doors on the bedroom side. In 
spite of its strange and comfortless situation, the bed was apparent- 
ly occupied at night by a sleeper : the sheets were on it, and the 
end of a thick red fisherman’s cap peeped out from under the pil- 
low. She ventured on opening the door near which the bed was 
placed, and found herself, as she conjectured from certain signs and 
tokens, in the admiral’s sleeping chamber. A moment’s observa- 
tion of the room was all she dared risk, and, softly closing the door 
again, she returned to the kitchen regions. 

The truckle-bed, and the strange position in which it was placed, 
dwelt on her mind all through the afternoon. Who could possibly 
sleep in it? The remembrance of the red fisherman’s cap, and the 
knowledge she had already gained of Mazey’s dog-like fidelity to 
his master, helped her to guess that the old sailor might be the oc- 
cupant of the truckle-bed. But why, with bedrooms enough and 
to spare, should he occupy that cold and comfortless situation at 
night ? Why should he sleep on guard outside his master’s door ? 
Was there some nocturnal danger in the house of which the admiral 
was afraid ? The question seemed absurd, and yet the position of 
the bed forced it irresistibly on her mind. 

Stimulated by her own ungovernable curiosity on this subject, 
Magdalen ventured to question the housekeeper. She acknowl- 
edged having walked from end to end of the passage on the second 
floor, to see if it was as long as the passage on the first ; and she 
mentioned having noticed with astonishment the position of the 
truckle-bed. Mrs. Drake answered her implied inquiry shortly and 
sharply. “ I don’t blame a young girl like you,” said the old lady, 
“ for being a little curious when she first comes into such a strange 
house as this. But remember, for the future, that your business 
does not lie on the bedroom story. Mr. Mazey sleeps on that bed 
you noticed. It is his habit at night to sleep outside his master’s 
door.” With that meagre explanation Mrs. Drake’s lips closed, and 
opened no more. 


526 


NO NAME. 


Later in the day Magdalen found an opportunity of applying to 
old Mazey himself. She discovered the veteran in high good hu- 
mor, smoking his pipe, and warming a tin mug of ale at his own 
snug fire. 

“ Mr. Mazey,” she asked boldly, “ why do you put your bed in 
that cold passage ?” 

“What! you have been up stairs, you young jade, have you,?” 
said old Mazey, looking up from his mug with a leer. 

Magdalen smiled, and nodded. “ Come ! come ! tell me,” she 
said, coaxingly. “ Why do you sleep outside the admiral’s door ?” 

“ Why do you part your hair in the middle, my dear ?” asked old 
Mazey, with another leer. 

“ I suppose, because I am accustomed to do it,” answered Mag- 
dalen. 

“ Ay ! ay !” said the veteran. “ That’s why, is it ? Well, my dear, 
the reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason w hy 
I sleep outside the admiral’s door. I know how to deal with ’em !” 
chuckled old Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale 
in high triumph. “ Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts 
and wives — I know how to deal with ’em !” 

Magdalen’s third and last attempt at solving the mystery of the 
truckle-bed was made while she was waiting on the admiral at din- 
ner. The old gentleman’s questions gave her an opportunity of 
referring to the subject, without any appearance of presumption or 
disrespect ; but he proved to be quite as impenetrable, in his way, 
as old Mazey and Mrs. Drake had been in theirs. “ It doesn’t con- 
cern you, my dear,” said the admiral, bluntly. “ Don’t be curious. 
Look in your Old Testament w hen you go down stairs, and see what 
happened in the Garden of Eden through curiosity. Be a good 
girl, and don’t imitate your mother Eve.” 

Late at night, as Magdalen passed the end of the second-floor 
passage, proceeding alone on her way up to her own room, she 
stopped and listened. A screen was placed at the entrance of the 
corridor, so as to hide it from the view of persons passing on the 
stairs. The snoring she heard on the other side of the screen en- 
couraged her to slip round it, and to advance a few 7 steps. Shad- 
ing the light of her candle with her hand, she ventured close to 
the admiral’s door, and saw, to her surprise, that the bed had been 
moved since she had seen it in the day-time, so as to stand exactly 
across the door, and to bar the way entirely to any one who might 
attempt to enter the admiral’s room. After this discovery, old 
Mazey himself, snoring lustily, with the red fisherman’s cap pulled 
down to his eyebrows, and the blankets drawn up to his nose, be- 
came an object of secondary importance only, by comparison w T ith 
his bed. That the veteran did actually sleep on guard before his 


NO NAME. 


527 


master’s door, and that he and the admiral and the housekeeper 
were in the secret of this unaccountable proceeding, was now be- 
yond all doubt. 

“A strange end,” thought Magdalen, pondering over her discov- 
ery as she stole up stairs to her own sleeping-room — “ a strange end 
to a strange day !” 


CHAPTER II. 

The first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen 
was, to all appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret 
Trust than on the day when she first entered on her service at St. 
Crux. 

But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight 
lost. Experience had already satisfied her on one important point 
— experience had shown that she could set the rooted distrust of 
the other servants safely at defiance. Time had accustomed the 
women to her presence in the house, without shaking the vague 
conviction which possessed them all alike, that the new-comer was 
not one of themselves. All that Magdalen could do in her own de- 
fense was to keep the instinctive female suspicion of her confined 
within those purely negative limits which it had occupied from the 
first, and this she accomplished. 

Day after day the women watched her with the untiring vigilance 
of malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a dis- 
covery rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and 
industriously — with an ever-present remembrance of herself and her 
place — the new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of 
rest and relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day 
with old Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night 
during which she was secure from observation in the solitude of her 
room. Thanks to the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each 
one of the servants had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a 
room of her own. Alone in the night, Magdalen might dare to be 
herself again — might dream of the past, and wake from the dream, 
encountering no curious eyes to notice that she was in tears — might 
ponder over the future, and be roused by no whisperings in corners, 
which tainted her with the suspicion of “ having something on her 
mind.” 

Satisfied, thus far, of the perfect security of her position in the 
house, she profited next by a second chance in her favor, which— 
before the fortnight was at an end — relieved her mind of all doubt 
on the formidable subject of Mrs. Lecount. 

Partly from the accidental gossip of the women at the table in 


NO NAME. 


528 

the servants’ hall ; partly from a marked paragraph in a Swiss news- 
paper, which she had found one morning lying open on the ad- 
miral’s easy-chair — she gained the welcome assurance that no dan- 
ger was to be dreaded, this time, from the housekeeper’s presence 
on the scene. Mrs. Lecount had, as it appeared, passed a week or 
more at St. Crux after the date of her master’s death, and had then 
left England, to live on the interest of her legacy, in honorable and 
prosperous retirement, in her native place. The paragraph in the 
Swiss newspaper described the fulfillment of this laudable project. 
Mrs. Lecount had not only established herself at Zurich, but (wisely 
mindful of the uncertainty of life) had also settled the charitable 
uses to which her fortune was to be applied after her death. One 
half of it was to go to the founding of a u Lecompte Scholarship ” 
for poor students in the University of Geneva. The other half was 
to be employed by the municipal authorities of Zurich in the main- 
tenance and education of a certain number of orphan girls, natives 
of the city, who were to be trained for domestic service in later life. 
The Swiss journalist adverted to these philanthropic bequests in 
terms of extravagant eulogy. Zurich was congratulated on the pos- 
session of a Paragon of public virtue ; and William Tell, in the char- 
acter of benefactor to Switzerland, was compared disadvantageously 
with Mrs. Lecount. 

The third week began, and Magdalen was now at liberty to take 
her first step forward on the way to the discovery of the Secret 
Trust. 

She ascertained from old Mazey that it was his master’s custom, 
during the winter and spring months, to occupy the rooms in the 
north wing ; and during the summer and autumn to cross the Arc- 
tic passage of “ Freeze-your-Bones,” and live in. the eastward apart- 
ments which looked out on the garden. While the Banqueting- 
Hall remained — owing to the admiral’s inadequate pecuniary re- 
sources — in its damp and dismantled state, and while the interior 
of St. Crux was thus comfortlessly divided into two separate resi- 
dences, no more convenient arrangement than this could well have 
been devised. Now and then (as Magdalen understood from her 
informant) there were days, both in winter and summer, when the 
admiral became anxious about the condition of the rooms which he 
was not occupying at the time, and when he insisted on investiga- 
ting the state of the furniture, the pictures, and the books with his 
own eyes. On these occasions, in summer as in winter, a blazing 
fire was kindled for some days previously in the large grate, and 
the charcoal was lit in the tripod-pan, to keep the Banqueting-Hall 
as warm as circumstances would admit. As soon as the old gentle- 
man’s anxieties were set at rest the rooms were shut up again, and 


NO NAME. 


529 


“ Freeze - your - Bones ” was once more abandoned for weeks and 
weeks together to damp, desolation, and decay. The last of these 
temporary migrations had taken place only a few days since; the 
admiral had satisfied himself that the rooms in the east wing were 
none the worse for the absence of their master, and he might now 
be safely reckoned on as settled in the north wing for weeks, and 
perhaps, if the season was cold, for months to come. 

Trifling as they might be in themselves, these particulars were of 
serious importance to Magdalen, for they helped her to fix the lim- 
its of the field of search. Assuming that the admiral was likely to 
keep all his important documents within easy reach of his own 
hand, she might now feel certain that the Secret Trust was secured 
in one or other of the rooms in the north wing. 

In which room ? That question was not easy to answer. 

Of the four inhabitable rooms which were all at the admiral’s dis- 
posal during the day — that is to say, of the dining-room, the libra- 
ry, the morning-room, and the drawing-room opening out of the 
vestibule — the library appeared to be the apartment in which, if 
he had a preference, he passed the greater part of his time. There 
was a table in this room, with drawers that locked ; there was a 
magnificent Italian cabinet, with doors that locked ; there were five 
cupboards under the book-cases, every one of which locked. There 
were receptacles similarly secured in the other rooms ; and in all or 
any of these papers might be kept. 

She had answered the bell, and had seen him locking and un- 
locking, now in one room now in another, but oftenest in the libra- 
ry. She had noticed occasionally that his expression was fretful 
and impatient when he looked round at her from an open cabinet 
or cupboard and gave his orders ; and she inferred that something 
in connection with his papers and possessions — it might or might 
not be the Secret Trust— irritated and annoyed him from time to 
time. She had heard him more than once lock something up in 
one of the rooms, come out and go into another room, wait there a 
few minutes, then return to the first room with his keys in his hand, 
and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This fidgety anx- 
iety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of the in- 
bred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally active 
man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirement — a life drifting 
backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment 
to steady it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it 
was just as probable that these comings and goings, these lockings 
and unlockings, might be attributable to the existence of some pri- 
vate responsibility which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the 
old man’s easy existence, and which tormented him with a sense ot 
oppression new to the experience of his later years. Either one of 


530 


NO NAME. 


these interpretations might explain his conduct as reasonably and 
as probably as the other. Which was the right interpretation of 
the two, it was, in Magdalen’s position, impossible to say. 

The one certain discovery at which she arrived was made in her 
first day’s observation of him. The admiral was a rigidly careful 
man with his keys. 

All the smaller keys he kept on a ring in the breast-pocket of his 
coat. The larger he locked up together ; generally, but not always, 
in one of the drawers of the library table. Sometimes he left them 
secured in this way at night ; sometimes he took them up to the 
bedroom with him in a little basket. He had no regular times for 
leaving them or for taking them away with him ; he had no dis- 
coverable reason for now securing them in the library-table drawer, 
and now again locking them up in some other place. The inveter- 
ate willfulness and caprice of his proceedings in these particulars 
defied every effort to reduce them to a system, and baffled all at- 
tempts at calculating on them beforehand. 

The hope of gaining positive information to act on, by laying art- 
ful snares for him which he might fall into in his talk, proved, from 
the outset, to be utterly futile. 

In Magdalen’s situation all experiments of this sort would have 
been in the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With 
the admiral they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer 
about from one subject to another ; his habit of keeping his tongue 
perpetually going, so long as there was any body, no matter whom, 
within reach of the sound of his voice ; his comical want of all dig- 
nity and reserve with his servants, promised, in appearance, much, 
and performed in reality nothing. No matter how diffidently or 
how respectfully Magdalen might presume on her master’s example, 
and on her master’s evident liking for her, the old man instantly 
discovered the advance she was making from her proper position, 
and instantly put her back in it again, with a quaint good humor 
which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt straightforwardness of 
purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory as it may sound, 
Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached ; he kept the 
distance between himself and his servant more effectually than if he 
had been the proudest man in England. The systematic reserve of 
a superior toward an inferior may be occasionally overcome — the 
systematic familiarity never. 

Slowly the time dragged on. The fourth week came ; and Mag- 
dalen had made no new discoveries. The prospect was depressing 
in the last degree. Even in the apparently hopeless event of her de- 
vising a means of getting at the admiral’s keys, she could not count 
on retaining possession of them unsuspected more than a few hours 
— hours which might be utterly wasted through her not knowing 


NO NAME. 


531 


in what direction to begin the search. The Trust might be locked 
up in any one of some twenty receptacles for papers, situated in four 
different rooms ; and which room was the likeliest to look in, which 
receptacle was the most promising to begin with, which position 
among other heaps of papers the one paper needful might be ex- 
pected to occupy, was more than she could say. Hemmed in by im- 
measurable uncertainties on every side ; condemned, as it were, to 
wander blindfold on the very brink of success, she waited for the 
chance that never came, for the event that never happened, with a 
patience which was sinking already into the patience of despair. 

Night after night she looked back over the vanished days, and 
not an event rose on her memory to distinguish them one from the 
other. The only interruptions to the weary uniformity of the life 
at St. Crux were caused by the characteristic delinquencies of old 
Mazey and the dogs. 

At certain intervals, the original wildness broke out in the na- 
tures of Brutus and Cassius. The modest comforts of home, the sa- 
vory charms of made dishes, the decorous joy of digestions accom- 
plished on hearth-rugs, lost all their attractions, and the dogs un- 
gratefully left the house to seek dissipation and adventure in the 
outer world. On these occasions the established after-dinner for- 
mula of question and answer between old Mazey and his master 
varied a little in one particular. “ God bless the Queen, Mazey,’’ 
and u How’s the wind, Mazey ?” were followed by a new inquiry : 
“ Where are the dogs, Mazey ?” “ Out on the loose, your honor, and 
be damned to ’em,” was the veteran’s unvarying answer. The ad- 
miral always sighed and shook his head gravely at the news, as if 
Brutus and Cassius had been sons of his own, who treated him with 
a want of proper filial respect. In two or three days’ time the dogs 
always returned, lean, dirty, and heartily ashamed of themselves. 
For the whole of the next day they were invariably tied up in dis- 
grace. On the day after they were scrubbed clean, and were form- 
ally re -admitted to the dining-room. There, Civilization, acting 
through the subtle medium of the Saucepan, recovered its hold on 
them ; and the admiral’s two prodigal sons, when they saw the 
covers removed, watered at the mouth as copiously as ever. 

Old Mazey, in his way, proved to be just as disreputably inclined 
on certain occasions as the dogs. At intervals, the original wild- 
ness in his nature broke out : he, too, lost all relish for the comforts 
of home, and ungratefully left the house. He usually disappeared 
in the afternoon, and returned at night as drunk as liquor could 
make him. He was by many degrees too seasoned a vessel to meet 
with any disasters on these occasions. His wicked old legs might 
take roundabout methods of progression, but they never failed him ; 
his wicked old eyes might see double, but they always showed him 


532 


NO NAME. 


the way home. Try as hard as they might, the servants could never 
succeed in persuading him that he was drunk : he always scorned 
the imputation. He even declined to admit the idea privately into 
his mind, until he had first tested his condition by an infallible cri- 
terion of his own. 

It was his habit, in these cases of Bacchanalian emergency, to 
stagger obstinately into his room on the ground-floor, to take the 
model-ship out of the cupboard, and to try if he could proceed with 
the never-to-be-completed employment of setting up the rigging. 
When he had smashed the tiny spars, and snapped asunder the del- 
icate ropes — then, and not till then, the veteran admitted facts as 
they were, on the authority of practical evidence. “ Ay ! ay !” he 
used to say confidentially to himself, “ the women are right. Drunk 
again, Mazey — drunk again !” Having reached this discovery, it 
was his habit to wait cunningly in the lower regions until the ad- 
miral was safe in his room, and then to ascend in discreet list slip- 
pers to his post. Too wary to attempt getting into the truckle-bed 
(which would have been only inviting the catastrophe of a fall 
against his master’s door), he always walked himself sober up and 
down the passage. More than once Magdalen had peeped round 
the screen, and had seen the old sailor unsteadily keeping his watch, 
and fancying himself once more at his duty on board ship. u This is 
an uncommonly lively vessel in a sea-way,” he used to mutter under 
his breath, when his legs took him down the passage in zigzag di- 
rections, or left him for the moment studying the “ Pints of the Com- 
pass ” on his own system, with his back against the wall. “ A nasty 
night, mind you,” he would maunder on, taking another turn. “ As 
dark as your pocket, and the wind heading us again from the old 
quarter.” On the next day old Mazey, like the dogs, was kept down 
stairs in disgrace. On the day after, like the dogs again, he was re- 
instated in his privileges ; and another change was introduced in the 
after-dinner formula. On entering the room, the old sailor stopped 
short, and made his excuses in this brief yet comprehensive form 
of words, with his back against the door : “ Please your honor, I’m 
ashamed of myself.” So the apology began and ended. “ This 
mustn’t happen again, Mazey,” the admiral used to answer. u It 
sha’n’t happen again, your honor.” “ Very good. Come here, and 
drink your glass of wine. God bless the Queen, Mazey.” The vet- 
eran tossed off his port, and the dialogue ended as usual. 

So the days passed, with no incidents more important than these 
to relieve their monotony, until the end of the fourth week was at 
hand. 

On the last day, an event happened ; on the last day, the long de- 
ferred promise of the future unexpectedly began to dawn. While 
Magdalen was spreading the cloth in the dining-room, as usual, Mrs. 


NO NAME. 


533 


Drake looked in, and instructed her on this occasion, for the first 
time, to lay the table for two persons. The admiral had received 
a letter from his nephew. Early that evening Mr. George Bartram 
was expected to return to St. Crux. 


CHAPTER III. 

After placing the second cover, Magdalen awaited the ringing 
of the dinner-bell, with an interest and impatience which she found 
it no easy task to conceal. The return of Mr. Bartram would, in all 
probability, produce a change in the life of the house; and from 
change of any kind, no matter how trifling, something might be 
hoped. The nephew might be accessible to influences which had " 
failed to reach the uncle. In any case, the two would talk of their 
affairs over their dinner ; and through that talk — proceeding day 
after day in her presence — the way to discovery, now absolutely in- 
visible, might, sooner or later, show itself. 

At last the bell rang, the door opened, and the two gentlemen en- 
tered the room together. 

Magdalen was struck, as her sister had been struck, by George 
Bartram’s resemblance to her father — judging by the portrait at 
Combe-Raven, which presented the likeness of Andrew Vanstone in 
his younger days. The light hair and florid complexion, the bright 
blue eyes and hardy upright figure, familiar to her in the picture, 
were all recalled to her memory, as the nephew followed the uncle 
across the room and took his place at table. She was not prepared 
for this sudden revival of the lost associations of home. Her atten- 
tion wandered as she tried to conceal its effect on her; and she 
made a blunder in waiting at table, for the first time since she had 
entered the house. 

A quaint reprimand from the admiral, half in jest, half in earnest, 
gave her time to recover herself. She ventured another look at 
George Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this 
time roused her curiosity immediately. His face and manner plain- 
ly expressed anxiety and preoccupation of mind. He looked often- 
er at his plate than at his uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one 
passing inspection of the new parlor-maid, when the admiral spoke 
to her) he never looked at all. Some uncertainty was evidently 
troubling his thoughts ; some oppression was weighing on his nat- 
ural freedom of manner. What uncertainty ? what oppression ? 
Would any personal revelations come out, little by little, in the 
course of conversation at the dinner-table ? 

No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and noth- 
ing in the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conver- 


534 


NO NAME. 


sation halted on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and 
trifling private topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, 
took their turn with the small household history of St. Crux : the 
leaders of the revolution which expelled Louis Philippe from the 
throne of France marched side by side, in the dinner-table review, 
with old Mazey and the dogs. The dessert was put on the table, 
the old sailor came in, drank his loyal toast, paid his respects to 
“ Master George,” and went out again. Magdalen followed him, 
on her way back to the servants’ offices, having heard nothing in 
the conversation of the slightest importance to the furtherance of 
her own design, from the first word of it to the last. She struggled 
hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They could hard- 
ly talk again to-morrow, they could hardly talk again the next day, 
of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders 
yet ; and time was all her own. 

Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their easy- 
chairs on either side of the fire ; and, in Magdalen’s absence, began 
the very conversation which it was Magdalen’s interest to hear. 

“ Claret, George ?” said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the 
table. “ You look out of spirits.” 

“lama little anxious, sir,” replied George, leaving his glass emp- 
ty, and looking straight into the fire. 

“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the admiral. “I am more than 
a little anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days 
of March — and nothing done ! Your time comes to an end on the 
third of May ; and there you sit, as if you had years still before you 
to turn round in. 

George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine. 

“ Am I really to understand, sir,” he asked, “ that you are serious 
in what you said to me last November ? Are you actually resolved 
to bind me to that incomprehensible condition ?” 

“ I don’t call it incomprehensible,” said the admiral, irritably. 

“ Don’t you, sir ? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally — as 
you have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch 
a farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married 
within a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks 
to your kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with 
which I might improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away 
from me, if I am not a married man on the third of May. I am sad- 
ly wanting in intelligence, I dare say, but a more incomprehensible 
proceeding I never heard of!” 

“No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We 
don’t understand sneering in Her Majesty’s Navy !” 

“ I mean no offense, sir. But I think it’s a little hard to astonish 


NO NAME. 


535 


me by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my 
experience of your character — and then, when I naturally ask for 
an explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If 
you and Noel came to some private arrangement together before he 
made his will, why not tell me ? Why set up a mystery between 
us, where no mystery need be ?” 

“ I won’t have it, George !” cried the admiral* angrily drumming 
on the table with the nut-crackers. “You are trying to draw me 
like a badger, but I won’t be drawn ! I’ll make any conditions I 
please ; and I’ll be accountable to nobody for them unless I like. 
It’s quite bad enough to have worries and responsibilities laid on 
my unlucky shoulders that I never bargained for — never mind what 
worries : they’re not yours, they’re mine — without being questioned 
and cross-questioned as if I was a witness in a box. Here’s a pretty 
fellow !” continued the admiral, apostrophizing his nephew in red- 
hot irritation, and addressing himself to the dogs on the hearth-rug 
for want of a better audience. “ Here’s a pretty fellow ? He is 
asked to help himself to two uncommonly comfortable things in 
their way — a fortune and a wife ; he is allowed six months to get 
the wife in (we should have got her, in the Navy, bag and baggage, 
in six days) ; he has a round dozen of nice girls, to my certain 
knowledge, in one part of the country and another, all at his dis- 
posal to choose from, and what does he do ? He sits month after 
month, with his lazy legs crossed before him ; he leaves the girls to 
pine on the stem, and he bothers his uncle to know the reason why ! 
I pity the poor unfortunate women. Men were made of flesh and 
blood, and plenty of it too, in my time. They’re made of machinery 
now.” 

“ I can only repeat, sir, I am sorry to have offended you,” said 
George. 

“ Pooh ! pooh ! you needn’t look at me in that languishing way 
if you are,” retorted the admiral. “ Stick to your wine, and I’ll 
forgive you. Your good health, George. I’m glad to see you again 
at St. Crux. Look at that plateful of sponge-cakes ! The cook has 
sent them up in honor of your return. We can’t hurt her feelings, 
and we can’t spoil our wine. Here !”— The admiral tossed four 
sponge-cakes in quick succession down the accommodating throats 
of the dogs. “ I am sorry, George,” the old gentleman gravely pro- 
ceeded ; “ I am really sorry you haven’t got your eye on one of those 
nice girls. You don’t know what a loss you’re inflicting on your- 
self; you don’t know what trouble and mortification you’re causing 
me, by this shilly-shally conduct of yours.” 

“ If you would only allow me to explain myself, sir, you would 
view my conduct in a totally different light. I am ready to marry 
to-morrow* if the lady will have me,” 


536 


NO NAME. 


u The devil you are ! So you have got a lady in your eye, after 
all ? Why in Heaven’s name couldn’t you tell me so before ? Nev- 
er mind, I’ll forgive you every thing, now I know you have laid 
your hand on a wife. Fill your glass again. Here’s her health in 
a bumper. By-the-bye, who is she ?” 

“ I’ll tell you directly, admiral. When we began this conversa 
tion, I mentioned that I was a little anxious — ” 

“ She’s not one of my round dozen of nice girls — aha, Master 
George, I see that in your face already ! Why are you anxious ?” 

“ I am afraid you will disapprove of my choice, sir.” 

“ Don’t beat about the bush ! How the deuce can I say whether 
I disapprove or not, if you won’t tell me who she is ?” 

u She is the eldest daughter of Andrew Yanstone, of Combe-Ra- 
ven.” 

“ Who ! ! !” 

“ Miss Yanstone, sir.” 

The admiral put down his glass of wine untasted. 

“ You’re right, George,” he said. “ I do disapprove of your choice 
—strongly disapprove of it.” 

“ Is it the misfortune of her birth, sir, that you object to ?” 

“ God forbid ! the misfortune of her birth is not her fault, poor 
thing. You know as well as I do, George, what I object to.” 

“ You object to her sister ?” 

“ Certainly ! The most liberal man alive might object to her sis- 
ter, I think.” 

“ It’s hard, sir, to make Miss Yanstone suffer for her sister’s faults.” 

a Faults , do you call them ? You have a mighty convenient mem- 
ory, George, when your own interests are concerned.” 

“ Call them crimes if you like, sir — I say again, it’s hard on Miss 
Yanstone. Miss Yanstone’s life is pure of all reproach. From first 
to last, she has borne her hard lot with such patience, and sweetness, 
and courage, as not one woman in a thousand would have shown in 
her place. Ask Miss Garth, who has known her from childhood. 
Ask Mrs. Tyrrel, who blesses the day when she came into the house — ” 

“ Ask a fiddlestick’s end ! I beg your pardon, George, but you are 
enough to try the patience of a saint. My good fellow, I don’t deny 
Miss Yanstone’s virtues. I’ll admit, if you like, she’s the best wom- 
an that ever put on a petticoat. That is not the question — ” 

“ Excuse me, admiral — it is the question, if she is to be my wife.” 

“ Hear me out, George ; look at it from my point of view, as well 
as your own. What did your cousin Noel do ? Your cousin Noel 
fell a victim, poor fellow, to one of the vilest conspiracies I ever 
heard of, and the prime mover of that conspiracy was Miss Yan- 
stone’s damnable sister. She deceived him in the most infamous 
manner ; and as soon as she was down for a handsome legacy in his 


NO NAME. 


537 


will, she had the poison ready to take his life. This is the truth ; 
we know it from Mrs. Lecount, who found the bottle locked up in 
her own room. If you marry Miss Yanstone, you make this wretch 
your sister-in-law. She becomes a member of our family. All the 
disgrace of what she has done ; all the disgrace of what she may do 
— and the Devil, who possesses her, only knows what lengths she 
may go to next — becomes our disgrace. Good heavens, George, con- 
sider what a position that is ! Consider what pitch you touch, if 
you make this woman your sister-in-law.” 

“ You have put your side of the question, admiral,” said George, 
resolutely ; “ now let me put mine. A certain impression is produced 
on me by a young lady whom I meet with under very interesting 
circumstances. I don’t act headlong on that impression, as I might 
have done if I had been some years younger ; I wait, and put it to 
the trial. Every time I see this young lady, the impression strength- 
ens ; her beauty grows on me, her character grows on me ; when I 
am away from her, I am restless and dissatisfied ; when I am with 
her, I am the happiest man alive. All I hear of her conduct from 
those who know her best more than confirms the high opinion I 
have formed of her. The one drawback I can discover is caused by 
a misfortune for which she is not responsible — the misfortune of hav- 
ing a sister who is utterly unworthy of her. Does this discovery — 
an unpleasant discovery, I grant you — destroy all those gopd quali- 
ties in Miss Vanstone for which I love and admire her ? Nothing 
of the sort — it only makes her good qualities all the more precious 
to me by contrast. If I am to have a drawback to contend with — 
and who expects any thing else in this world ? — I would infinitely 
rather have the drawback attached to my wife’s sister than to my 
wife. My wife’s sister is not essential to my happiness, but my wife 
is. In my opinion, sir, Mrs. Noel Yanstone has done mischief enough 
already. I don’t see the necessity of letting her do more mischief, 
by depriving me of a good wife. Right or wrong, that is my point 
of view. I don’t wish to trouble you with any questions of senti- 
ment. All I wish to say is that I am old enough by this time to 
know my own mind, and that my mind is made up. If my mar- 
riage is essential to the execution of your intentions on my behalf, 
there is only one woman in the world whom I can marry, and that 
woman is Miss Yanstone.” 

There was no resisting this plain declaration. Admiral Bartram 
rose from his chair without making any reply, and walked perturb- 
edly up and down the room. 

The situation was emphatically a serious one. Mrs. Girdlestone’s 
death had already produced the failure of one of the two objects 
contemplated by the Secret Trust. If the third of May arrived and 
found George a single man, the second (and last) of the objects 


538 


NO NAME. 


would then have failed in its turn. In little more than a fortnight, 
at the very latest, the Banns must be published in Ossory church, or 
the time would fail for compliance with one of the stipulations in- 
sisted on in the Trust. Obstinate as the admiral was by nature, 
strongly as he felt the objections which attached to his nephew’s 
contemplated alliance, he recoiled in spite of himself, as he paced 
the room and saw the facts on either side immovably staring him in 
the face. 

“Are you engaged to Miss Vanstone?” he asked, suddenly. 

“ No, sir,” replied George. “ I thought it due to your uniform 
kindness to me to speak to you on the subject first.” 

“ Much obliged, I’m sure. And you have put off speaking to me 
to the last moment, just as you put off every thing else. Do you 
think Miss Vanstone will say yes when you ask her ?” 

George hesitated. 

“ The devil take your modesty !” shouted the admiral. “ That is 
not a time for modesty ; this is a time for speaking out. Will she 
or won’t she ?” 

“ I think she will, sir.” 

The admiral laughed sardonically, and took another turn in the 
room. He suddenly stopped, put his hands in his pockets, and 
stood still in a corner, deep in thought. After an interval of a few 
minutes, his face cleared a little ; it brightened with the dawning 
of a new idea. He walked round briskly to George’s side of the 
fire, and laid his hand kindly on his nephew’s shoulder. 

“You’re wrong, George,” he said; “but it is too late now to set 
you right. On the sixteenth of next month the Banns must be put 
up in Ossory church, or you will lose the money. Have you told 
Miss Vanstone the position you stand in ? Or have you put that off 
to the eleventh hour, like every thing else ?” 

“ The position is so extraordinary, sir, and it mjght lead to so 
much misapprehension of my motives, that I have felt unwilling to 
allude to it. I hardly know how I can tell her of it at all.” 

“ Try the experiment of telling her friends. Let them know it’s 
a question of money, and they will overcome her scruples, if you 
can’t. But that is not what I had to say to you. How long do you 
propose stopping here this time ?” 

“ I thought of staying a few days, and then — ” 

“And then of going back to London and making your offer, I 
suppose? Will a week give you time enough to pick your oppor- 
tunity with Miss Vanstone — a week out of the fortnight or so that 
you have to spare ?” 

“ I will stay here a week, admiral, with pleasure, if you wish it " 

“ I don’t wish it. I want you to pack up your traps, and be off 
to-morrow.” 


NO NAME. 


539 


George looked at his uncle in silent astonishment. 

“You found some letters waiting for you when you got here,” 
proceeded the admiral. “Was one of those letters from my old 
friend, Sir Franklin Brock ?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Was it an invitation to you to go and stay at the Grange?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ To go at once ?” 

“ At once, if I could manage it.” 

“ Very good. I want you to manage it ; I want you to start for 
the Grange to-morrow.” 

George looked back at the fire, and sighed impatiently. 

“I understand you now, admiral,” he said. “You are entirely 
mistaken in me. My attachment to Miss Vanstone is not to be 
shaken in that manner.” 

Admiral Bartram took his quarter-deck walk again, up and down 
the room. 

“ One good turn deserves another, George,” said the old gentle- 
man. “ If I am willing to make concessions on my side, the least 
you can do is to meet me half-way, and make concessions on yours.” 

“ I don’t deny it, sir.” 

“Very well. Now listen to my proposal. Give me a fair hear- 
ing, George — a fair hearing is every man’s privilege. I will be per- 
fectly just to begin with. I won’t attempt to deny that you hon- 
estly believe Miss Vanstone is the only woman in the world who 
can make you happy. I don’t question that. What I do question 
is, whether you really know your own mind in this matter quite so 
well as you think you know it yourself. You can’t deny, George, 
that you have been in love with a good many women in your time ? 
Among the rest of them, you have been in love with Miss Brock. 
No longer ago than this time last year, there was a sneaking kind- 
ness between you and that young lady, to say the least of it. And 
quite right, too ! Miss Brock is one of that round dozen of darlings 
I mentioned over our first glass of wine.” 

“ You are confusing an idle flirtation, sir, with a serious attach- 
ment,” said George. “ You are altogether mistaken — you are, in- 
deed.” 

“ Likely enough ; I don’t pretend to be infallible — I leave that to 
my juniors. But I happen to have known you, George, since you 
were the height of my old telescope ; and I want to have this seri- 
ous attachment of yours put to the test. If you can satisfy me that 
your whole heart and soul are as strongly set on Miss Vanstone as 
you suppose them to be, I must knock under to necessity, and keep 
my objections to myself. But I must be satisfied first. Go to the 
Grange to-morrow, and stay there a week in Miss Brock’s society. 


540 


NO NAME. 


Give that charming girl a fair chance of lighting up the old ^#1r‘ 
again if she can, and then come back to St. Crux, and let me he.*/ 
the result. If you tell me, as an honest man, that your attachment 
to Miss Yanstone still remains unshaken, you will have heard the 
last of my objections from that moment. Whatever misgivings I 
may feel in my own mind, I will say nothing, and do nothing, ad- 
verse to your wishes. There is my proposal. I dare say it looks 
like an old man’s folly, in your eyes. But the old man won’t trou- 
ble you much longer, George ; and it may be a pleasant reflection, 
when you have got sons of your own, to remember that you humored 
him in his last days.” 

He came back to the fire-place as he said those words, and laid 
his hand once more on his nephew’s shoulder. George took the 
hand and pressed it affectionately. In the tenderest and best sense 
of the word, his uncle had been a father to him. 

“I will do what you ask me, sir,” he replied, “if you seriously 
wish it. But it is only right to tell you that the experiment will be 
perfectly useless. However, if you prefer my passing a week at the 
Grange to my passing it here, to the Grange I will go.” 

“ Thank you, George,” said the admiral, bluntly. “ I expected as 
much from you, and you have not disappointed me. If Miss Brock 
doesn’t get us out of this mess,” thought the wily old gentleman, as 
he resumed his place at the table, “ my nephew’s weather-cock of a 
head has turned steady with a vengeance ! We’ll consider the ques- 
tion settled for to-night, George,” he continued aloud, “ and call an- 
other subject. These family anxieties don’t improve the flavor of 
my old claret. The bottle stands with you. What are they doing 
at the theatres in London ? We always patronized the theatres, in 
my time, in the Navy. We used to like a good tragedy to begin 
with, and a hornpipe to cheer us up at the end of the entertain- 
ment.” 

For the rest of the evening, the talk flowed in the ordinary chan- 
nels. Admiral Bartram only returned to the forbidden subject 
when he and his nephew parted for the night. 

“ You won’t forget to-morrow, George ?” 

“ Certainly not, sir. I’ll take the dog-cart, and drive myself over 
after breakfast.” 

Before noon the next day Mr. George Bartram had left the house, 
and the last chance in Magdalen’s favor had left it with him. 


NO NAME. 


541 


CHAPTER IV. 

When the servants’ dinner-bell at St. Crux rang as usual on the 
day of George Bartram’s departure, it was remarked that the new 
parlor - maid’s . place at table remained empty. One of the infe- 
rior servants was sent to her room to make inquiries, and returned 
with the information that “ Louisa ” felt a little faint, and begged 
that her attendance at table might be excused for that day. Upon 
this, the superior authority of the housekeeper was invoked, and 
Mrs. Drake went up stairs immediately to ascertain the truth for 
herself. Her first look of inquiry satisfied her that the parlor-maid’s 
indisposition, whatever the cause of it might be, was certainly not 
assumed to serve any idle or sullen purpose of her own. She re- 
spectfully declined taking any of the remedies which the housekeep- 
er offered, and merely requested permission to try the efficacy of a 
walk in the fresh air. 

“ I have been accustomed to more exercise, ma’am, than I take 
here,” she said. “ Might I go into the garden, and try what the air 
will do for me ?” 

“ Certainly. Can you walk by yourself, or shall I send some one 
with you ?” 

“ I will go by myself, if you please, ma’am.” 

“ Very well. Put on your bonnet and shawl, and, when you get 
out, keep in the east garden. The admiral sometimes walks in the 
north garden, and he might feel surprised at seeing you there. 
Come to my room, when you have had air and exercise enough, and 
let me see how you are.” 

In a few minutes more Magdalen was out in the east garden. The 
sky was clear and sunny ; but the cold shadow of the house rested 
on the garden walk and chilled the midday air. She walked to- 
ward the ruins of the old monastery, situated on the south side of 
the more modem range of buildings. Here there were lonely open 
spaces to breathe in freely; here the pale March sunshine stole 
through the gaps of desolation and decay, and met her invitingly 
with the genial promise of spring. 

She ascended three or four riven stone steps, and seated herself 
on some ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The 
place she had chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In 
centuries long gone by, the stream of human sin and human suffer- 
ing had flowed, day after to the confessional, over the place 


542 


NO NAME. 


where she now sat. Of all the miserable women who had trodden 
those old stones in the by-gone time, no more miserable creature 
had touched them than the woman whose feet rested on them now. 

Her hands trembled as she placed them on either side of her, to 
support herself on the stone seat. She laid them on her lap ; they 
trembled there. She held them out, and looked at them wonder- 
ingly ; they trembled as she looked. “ Like an old woman !” she 
said, faintly, and let them drop again at her side. 

For the first time, that morning, the cruel discovery had forced 
itself on her mind — the discovery that her strength was failing her, 
at the time when she had most confidently trusted to it, at the time 
when she wanted it most. She had felt the surprise of Mr. Bartram’s 
unexpected departure, as if it had been the shock of the severest ca- 
lamity that could have befallen her. That one check to her hopes — 
a check which at other times would only have roused the resisting 
power in her to new efforts — had struck her with as suffocating a 
terror, had prostrated her with as all-mastering a despair, as if she 
had been overwhelmed by the crowning disaster of expulsion from 
St. Crux. But one warning could be read in such a change as this. 
Into the space of little more than a year she had crowded the wear- 
ing and wasting emotions of a life. The bountiful gifts of health 
and strength, so prodigally heaped on her by Nature, so long abused 
with impunity, were failing her at last. 

She looked up at the far faint blue of the sky. She heard the 
joyous singing of birds among the ivy that clothed the ruins. Oh 
the cold distance of the heavens ! Oh the pitiless happiness of the 
birds ! Oh the lonely horror of sitting there, and feeling old and 
weak and worn, in the heyday of her youth ! She rose with a last 
effort of resolution, and tried to keep back the hysterical passion 
swelling at her heart by moving and looking about her. Rapidly 
and more rapidly she walked to and fro in the sunshine. The ex- 
ercise helped her, through the very fatigue that she felt from it. 
She forced the rising tears desperately back to their sources ; she 
fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched it from its hold. Lit- 
tle by little her mind began to clear again : the despairing fear of 
herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts. There were re- 
serves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted ; there was a 
spirit sorely wounded, but not yet subdued. 

She gradually extended the limits of her walk ; she gradually re- 
covered the exercise of her observation. 

At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a 
less ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where 
the stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some ter- 
mer time. Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the 
ancient cells ; wooden doors had been added ; and the old monas- 


NO NAME. 


543 


tic chambers had been used as sheds to hold the multifarious lum- 
ber of St. Crux. No padlocks guarded any of the doors. Magda- 
len had only to push them to let the daylight in on the litter inside. 
She resolved to investigate the sheds one after the other — not from 
curiosity, not with the idea of making discoveries of any sort. Her 
only object was to fill up the vacant time, and to keep the thoughts 
that unnerved her from returning to her mind. 

The first shed she opened contained the gardener’s utensils, large 
and small. The second was littered with fragments of broken fur- 
niture, empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, 
boxes without covers, and books torn from their bindings. As 
Magdalen turned to leave the shed, after one careless glance round 
her at the lumber that it contained, her foot struck something on 
the ground which tinkled against a fragment of china lying near it. 
She stooped, and discovered that the tinkling substance was a rusty 
key. 

She picked up the key and looked at it. She walked out into 
the air, and considered a little. More old forgotten keys were prob- 
ably lying about among the lumber in the sheds. What if she col- 
lected all she could find, and tried them, one after another, in the 
locks of the cabinets and cupboards now closed against her ? Was 
there chance enough that any one of them might fit, to justify her 
in venturing on the experiment ? If the locks at St. Crux were as 
old-fashioned as the furniture — if there were no protective niceties 
of modern invention to contend against — there was chance enough 
beyond all question. Who could say whether the very key in her 
hand might not be the lost duplicate of one of the keys on the 
admiral’s bunch ? In the dearth of all other means of finding the 
way to her end, the risk was worth running. A flash of the old 
spirit sparkled in her weary eyes as she turned and re-entered the 
shed. 

Half an hour more brought her to the limits of the time which 
she could venture to allow herself in the open air. In that interval 
she had searched the sheds from first to last, and had found five 
more keys. “ Five more chances !” she thought to herself, as she 
hid the keys, and hastily returned to the house. 

After first reporting herself in the housekeeper’s room, she went 
up stairs to remove her bonnet and shawl ; taking that opportunity 
to hide the keys in her bed-chamber, until night came. They were 
crusted thick with rust and dirt ; but she dared not attempt to clean 
them, until bed-time secluded her from the prying eyes of the serv- 
ants in the solitude of her room. 

When the dinner hour brought her, as usual, into personal con- 
tact with the admiral, she was at once struck by a change in him. 
For the first time in her experience the old gentleman was silent 


514 


NO NAME. 


and depressed. He ate less than usual, and he hardly said five 
words to her from the beginning of the meal to the end. Some un 
welcome subject of reflection had evidently fixed itself on his mind, 
and remained there persistently, in spite of his efforts to shake it 
off. At intervals through the evening, she wondered with an ever- 
growing perplexity what the subject could be. 

At last the lagging hours reached their end, and bed-time came. 
Before she slept that night, Magdalen had cleaned the keys from 
all impurities, and had oiled the wards, to help them smoothly into 
the locks. The last difficulty that remained was the difficulty of 
choosing the time when the experiment might be tried with the 
least risk of interruption and discovery. After carefully consider- 
ing the question overnight, Magdalen could only resolve to wait 
and be guided by the events of the next day. 

The morning came, and for the first time at St. Crux events jus- 
tified the trust she had placed in them. The morning came, and 
the one remaining difficulty that perplexed her was unexpectedly 
smoothed away by no less a person than the admiral himself ! To 
the surprise of every one in the house, he announced at breakfast 
that he had arranged to start for London in an hour; that he should 
pass the night in town ; and that he might be expected to return 
to St. Crux in time for dinner on the next day. He volunteered no 
further explanations to the housekeeper or to any one else, but it 
was easy to see that his errand to London was of no ordinary im- 
portance in his own estimation. He swallowed his breakfast in a 
violent hurry, and he was impatiently ready for the carriage before 
it came to the door. 

Experience had taught Magdalen to be cautious. She waited a 
little, after Admiral Bartram’s departure, before she ventured on try- 
ing her experiment with the keys. It was well she did so. Mrs. 
Drake took advantage of the admiral’s absence to review the condi- 
tion of the apartments on the first floor. The results of the investi- 
gation by no means satisfied her; brooms and dusters were set to 
work ; and the house-maids were in and out of the rooms perpetu- 
ally, as long as the daylight lasted. 

The evening passed, and still the safe opportunity for which Mag- 
dalen was on the watch never presented itself. Bed -time came 
again, and found her placed between the two alternatives of trust- 
ing to the doubtful chances of the next morning, or of trying the 
keys boldly in the dead of night. In former times she would have 
made her choice without hesitation. She hesitated now ; but the 
wreck of her old courage still sustained her, and she determined to 
make the venture at night. 

They kept early hours at St. Crux. If she waited in her room un- 
til half-past eleven, she would wait loner enough. At that time she 


NO NAME. 


545 


stole out on to the staircase, with the keys in her pocket, and the 
candle in her hand. 

On passing the entrance to the corridor on the bed-room floor, she 
stopped and listened. No sound of snoring, no shuffling of infirm 
footsteps, was to be heard on the other side of the screen. She looked 
round it distrustfully. The stone passage was a solitude, and the 
truckle-bed was empty. Her own eyes had shown her old Mazey 
on his way to the upper regions, more than an hour since, with a 
candle in his hand. Had he taken advantage of his master’s ab- 
sence, to enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of sleeping in a room ? As 
the thought occurred to her, a sound from the further end of the 
corridor just caught her ear. She softly advanced toward it, and 
heard through the door of the last and remotest of the spare bed- 
chambers the veteran’s lusty snoring in the room inside. The dis- 
covery was startling, in more senses than one. It deepened the im- 
penetrable mystery of the truckle-bed ; for it showed plainly that 
old Mazey had no barbarous preference of his own for passing his 
nights in the corridor; he occupied that strange and comfortless 
sleeping-place purely and entirely on his master’s account. 

It was no time for dwelling on the reflections which this conclu- 
sion might suggest. Magdalen retraced her steps along the passage, 
and descended to the first floor. Passing the doors nearest to her, 
she tried the library first. On the staircase and in the corridors she 
had felt her heart throbbing fast with an unutterable fear; but a 
sense of security returned to her when she found herself within the 
four walls of the room, and when she had closed the door on the 
ghostly quiet outside. 

The first lock she tried was the lock of the table-drawer. None 
of the keys fitted it. Her next experiment was made on the cabinet. 
Would the second attempt fail, like the first ? 

No ! One of the keys fitted ; one of the keys, with a little patient 
management, turned the lock. She looked in eagerly. There were 
open shelves above, and one long drawer under them. The shelves 
were devoted to specimens of curious minerals, neatly labeled and 
arranged. The drawer was divided into compartments. Two of 
the compartments contained papers. In the first, she discovered 
nothing but a collection of receipted bills. In the second, she found 
a heap of business documents ; but the writing, yellow with age, was 
enough of itself to warn her that the Trust was not there. She shut 
the doors of the cabinet, and, after locking them again with some 
little difficulty, proceeded to try the keys in the book-case cupboards 
next, before she continued her investigations in the other rooms. 

The book-case cupboards were unassailable ; the drawers and cup- 
boards in all the other rooms were unassailable. One after another 
she tried them patiently in regular succession. It was useless. The 


546 


NO NAME. 


chance which the cabinet in the library had offered in her favor was 
the first chance and the last. 

She went back to her room, seeing nothing but her own gliding 
shadow, hearing nothing but her own stealthy footfall in the mid- 
night stillness of the house. After mechanically putting the keys 
away in their former hiding-place, she looked toward her bed, and 
turned away from it, shuddering. The warning remembrance of 
what she had suffered that morning in the garden was vividly pres- 
ent to her mind. “Another chance tried,” she thought to herself, 
“ and another chance lost ! I shall break down again if I think of 
it; and I shall think of it if I lie awake in the dark.” She had 
brought a work-box with her to St. Crux, as one of the many little 
things which in her character of a servant it was desirable to pos- 
sess ; and she now opened the box, and applied herself resolutely to 
work. Her want of dexterity with her needle assisted the object 
she had in view ; it obliged her to pay the closest attention to her 
employment ; it forced her thoughts away from the two subjects of 
all others which she now dreaded most — herself and the future. 

The next day, as he had arranged, the admiral returned. His vis- 
it to London had not improved his spirits. The shadow of some 
unconquerable doubt still clouded his face ; his restless tongue was 
strangely quiet, while Magdalen waited on him at his solitary meal. 
That night the snoring resounded once more on the inner side of the 
screen, and old Mazey was back again in the comfortless truckle-bed. 

Three more days passed — April came. On the second of the 
month — returning as unexpectedly as he had departed a week be- 
fore — Mr. George Bartram re-appeared at St. Crux. 

He came back early in the afternoon, and had an interview with 
his uncle in the library. The interview over, he left the house 
again, and was driven to the railway by the groom in time to catch 
the last train to London that night. The groom noticed, on the 
road, that “ Mr. George seemed to be rather pleased than otherwise 
at leaving St. Crux.” He also remarked, on his return, that the ad- 
miral swore at him for overdriving the horses — an indication of ill- 
temper, on the part of his master, which he described as being en- 
tirely without precedent in all his former experience. Magdalen, 
in her department of service, had suffered in like manner under the 
old man’s irritable humor : he had been dissatisfied with every thing 
she did in the dining-room; and he had found fault with all the 
dishes, one after another, from the mutton -broth to the toasted 
cheese. 

The next two days passed as usual. On the third day an event 
happened. In appearance, it was nothing more important than a 
ring at the drawing-room bell. In reality, it was the forerunner of 
approaching catastrophe — the formidable herald of the end. 


NO NAME. 


547 


It was Magdalen’s business to answer the bell. On reaching the 
drawing-room door, she knocked as usual. There was no reply. 
After again knocking, and again receiving no answer, she ventured 
into the room, and was instantly met by a current of cold air flow- 
ing full on her face. The heavy sliding door in the opposite wall 
was pushed back, and the Arctic atmosphere of Freeze-your-Bones 
was pouring unhindered into the empty room. 

She waited near the door, doubtful what to do next ; it was cer- 
tainly the drawing-room bell that had rung, and no other. She 
waited, looking through the open door- way opposite, down the 
wilderness of the dismantled Hall. 

A little consideration satisfied her that it would be best to go 
down stairs again, and wait there for a second summons from the 
bell. On turning to leave the room, she happened to look back 
once more, and exactly at that moment she saw the door open at 
the opposite extremity of the Banqueting-hall— the door leading 
into the first of the apartments in the east wing. A tall man came 
out, wearing his greatcoat and his hat, and rapidly approached the 
drawing-room. His gait betrayed him, while he was still too far 
off for his features to be seen. Before he was quite half-way across 
the Hall, Magdalen had recognized — the admiral. 

He looked, not irritated only, but surprised as well, at finding his 
parlor-maid waiting for him in the drawing-room, and inquired, 
sharply and suspiciously, what she wanted there? Magdalen re- 
plied that she had come there to answer the bell. His face cleared 
a little when he heard the explanation. “ Yes, yes ; to be sure,” he 
said. “I did ring, and then I forgot it.” He pulled the sliding 
door back into its place as he spoke. “ Coals,” he resumed, impa- 
tiently, pointing to the empty scuttle. “ I rang for coals.” 

Magdalen went back to the kitchen regions. After communica- 
ting the admiral’s order to the servant whose special duty it was to 
attend to the fires, she returned to the pantry, and, gently closing 
the door, sat down alone to think. 

It had been her impression in the drawing-room — and it was her 
impression still — that she had accidentally surprised Admiral Bar- 
tram on a visit to the east rooms, which, for some urgent reason of 
his own, he wished to keep a secret. Haunted day and night by 
the one dominant idea that now possessed her, she leaped all logical 
difficulties at a bound, and at once associated the suspicion of a se- 
cret proceeding on the admiral’s part with the kindred suspicion 
which pointed to him as the depositary of the Secret Trust. Up to 
this time it had been her settled belief that he kept all his impor- 
tant documents in one or other of the suite of rooms which he hap- 
pened to be occupying for the time being. Why — she now asked 
herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion which had hitherto 


548 


NO NAME. 


satisfied her mind — why might he not lock some of them up in the 
other rooms as well ? The remembrance of the keys still concealed 
in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the rea- 
sonableness of this new view. With one unimportant exception, 
those keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the 
north side of the house. Might they not succeed with the cabinets 
and cupboards in the east rooms, on which she had never tried 
them, or thought of trying them, yet ? If there was a chance, how- 
ever small, of turning them to better account than she had turned 
them thus far, it was a chance to be tried. If there was a possibili- 
ty, however remote, that the Trust might be hidden in any one of 
the locked repositories in the east wing, it was a possibility to be 
put to the test. When ? Her own experience answered the ques- 
tion. At the time when no prying eyes were open, and no acci- 
dents were to be feared — when the house was quiet — in the dead 
of night. 

She knew enough of her changed self to dread the enervating in- 
fluence of delay. She determined to run the risk headlong that night. 

More blunders escaped her when dinner-time came; the admi- 
ral’s criticisms on her waiting at table were sharper than ever. His 
hardest words inflicted no pain on her ; she scarcely heard him — 
her mind was dull to every sense but the sense of the coming trial. 
The evening which had passed slowly to her on the night of her 
first experiment with the keys passed quickly now. When bed- 
time came, bed-time took her by surprise. 

She waited longer on this occasion than she had waited before. 
The admiral was at home ; he might alter his mind and go down 
stairs again, after he had gone up to his room ; he might have for- 
gotten something in the library, and might return to fetch it. Mid- 
night struck from the clock in the servants’ hall before she ven- 
tured out of her room, with the keys again in her pocket, with the 
candle again in her hand. 

At the first of the stairs on which she set her foot to descend, an 
all-mastering hesitation, an unintelligible shrinking from some peril 
unknown, seized her on a sudden. She waited, and reasoned with 
herself. She had recoiled from no sacrifices, she had yielded to no 
fears, in carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admis- 
sion to St. Crux ; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the 
outset had been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of 
resolution the starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance. 
u I shrank from nothing to get here,” she said to herself. “ What 
madness possesses me that I shrink now ?” 

Every pulse in her quickened at the thought, with an animating 
shame that nerved her to go on. She descended the stairs, from the 
third floor to the second, from the second to the first, without trust 


NO NAME. 


549 


in g herself to pause again within easy reach of her own room. In 
another minute, she had reached the end of the corridor, had crossed 
the vestibule, and had entered the drawing-room. It was only when 
her grasp was on the heavy brass handle of the sliding door — it was 
only at the moment before she pushed the door back — that she wait- 
ed to take breath. The Banqueting-hall was close on the other 
side of the wooden partition against which she stood ; her excited 
imagination felt the death-like chill of it flowing over her already. 

She pushed back the sliding door a few inches — and stopped in 
momentary alarm. When the admiral had closed it in her presence 
that day, she had heard no noise. When old Mazey had opened it 
to show her the rooms in the east wing, she had heard no noise. 
Now, in the night silence, she noticed for the first time that the 
door made a sound — a dull, rushing sound, like the wind. 

She roused herself, and pushed it farther back — pushed it half- 
way into the hollow chamber in the w T all constructed to receive it. 
She advanced boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the 
Banqueting-hall face to face. 

The moon was rounding the southern side of the house. Her 
paling beams streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long 
strips of slanting light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The 
black shadows of the pediments between each window, alternating 
with the strips of light, heightened the wan glare of the moonshine 
on the floor. Toward its lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously 
into darkness. The ceiling was lost to view ; the yawning fire-place, 
the overhanging mantel piece, the long row of battle pictures above, 
were all swallowed up in night. But one visible object was dis- 
cernible, besides the gleaming windows and the moon-striped floor. 
Midway in the last and farthest of the strips of light, the tripod rose 
erect on its gaunt black legs, like a monster called to life by the 
moon — a monster rising through the light, and melting invisibly 
into the upper shadows of the Hall. Far and near, all sound lay 
dead, drowned in the stagnant cold. The soothing hush of night 
was awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid abysses of si- 
lence more immeasurable still. 

She stood motionless in the door-way, with straining eyes, with 
straining ears. She looked for some moving thing, she listened for 
some rising sound, and looked and listened in vain. A quick cease- 
less shivering ran through her from head to foot. The shivering 
of fear, or the shivering of cold ? The bare doubt roused her reso- 
lute will. “ Now,” she thought, advancing a step through the door- 
way, u or never ! I’ll count the strips of moonlight three times over, 
and cross the Hall.” 

“ One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, 
three, four, five.” 


550 


NO NAME. 


As the final number passed her lips at the third time of counting, 
she crossed the Hall. Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, 
one hand holding the candle, the other mechanically grasping the 
folds of her dress, she sped, ghost-like, down the length of the ghost- 
ly place. She reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms, 
opened it, and ran in. The sudden relief of attaining a refuge, the 
sudden entrance into a new atmosphere, overpowered her for the mo- 
ment. She had just time to put the candle safely on a table before 
she dropped giddy and breathless into the nearest chair. 

Little by little she felt the rest quieting her. In a few minutes 
she became conscious of the triumph of having won her way to the 
east rooms. In a few minutes she was strong enough to rise from 
the chair, to take the keys from her pocket, and to look round her. 

The first objects of furniture in the room which attracted her at- 
tention were an old bureau of carved oak, and a heavy buhl table 
with a cabinet attached. She tried the bureau first: it looked the 
likeliest receptacle for papers of the two. Three of the keys proved 
to be of a size to enter the lock, but none of them would turn it. 
The bureau was unassailable. She left it, and paused to trim the 
wick of the candle before she tried the buhl cabinet next. 

At the moment when she raised her hand to the candle, she heard 
the stillness of the Banqueting-hall shudder with the terror of a 
sound — a sound faint and momentary, like the distant rushing of 
the wind. 

The sliding door in the drawing-room had moved. 

Which way had it moved ? Had an unknown hand pushed it 
back in its socket farther than she had pushed it, or pulled it to 
again, and closed it ? The horror of being shut out all night, by 
some undiscoverable agency, from the life of the house, was stronger 
in her than the horror of looking across the Banqueting-hall. She 
made desperately for the door of the room. 

It had fallen to silently after her when she had come in, but it 
was not closed. She pulled it open, and looked. 

The sight that met her eyes rooted her, panic-stricken, to the 
spot. 

Close to the first of the row of windows, counting from the draw- 
ing-room, and full in the gleam of it, she saw a solitary figure. It 
stood motionless, rising out of the farthest strip of moonlight on the 
floor. As she looked, it suddenly disappeared. In another instant 
she saw it again, in the second strip of moonlight — lost it again — 
saw it in the third strip — lost it once more — and saw it in the 
fourth. Moment by moment it advanced, now mysteriously lost in 
the shadow, now suddenly visible again in the light, until it reach' 
ed the fifth and nearest strip of moonlight. There it paused, and 
strayed aside slowly to the middle of the Hajl. It stopped at the 


NO NAME. 


55 ! 


tripod, and stood, shivering audibly in the silence, with its hands 
raised over the dead ashes, in the action of warming them at a fire. 
It turned back again, moving down the path of the moonlight, 
stopped at the fifth window, turned once more, and came on softly 
through the shadow straight to the place where Magdalen stood. 

Her voice was dumb, her will was helpless. Every sense in her 
but the seeing sense was paralyzed. The seeing sense — held fast in 
the fetters of its own terror — looked unchangeably straightforward, 
as it had looked from the first. There she stood in the door-way, 
full in the path of the figure advancing on her through the shadow, 
nearer and nearer, step by step. 

It came close. 

The bonds of horror that held her burst asunder when it was 
within arms-length. She started back. The light of the candle on 
the table fell full on its face, and showed her — Admiral Bartram. 

A long, gray dressing-gown was wrapped round him. His head 
was uncovered ; his feet were bare. In his left hand he carried his 
little basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly, his lips whisper- 
ing without intermission, his open eyes staring straight before him 
with the glassy stare of death. His eyes revealed to her the terrify- 
ing truth. He was walking in his sleep. 

The terror of seeing him as she saw him now was not the terror 
she had felt when her eyes first lighted on him — an apparition in 
the moonlight, a spectre in the ghostly Hall. This time she could 
struggle against the shock; she could feel the depth of her own 
fear. 

He passed her, and stopped in the middle of the room. Mag- 
dalen ventured near enough to him to be within reach of his voice 
as he muttered to himself. She ventured nearer still, and heard 
the name of her dead husband fall distinctly from the sleep-walk- 
er’s lips. 

“ Noel !” he said, in the low monotonous tones of a dreamer talk- 
ing in his sleep, “ my good fellow, Noel, take it back again ! It 
worries me day and night. I don’t know where it’s safe ; I don’t 
know where to put it. Take it back, Noel — take it back!” 

As those words escaped him, he walked to the buhl cabinet. He 
sat down in the chair placed before it, and searched in the basket 
among his keys. Magdalen softly followed him, and stood behind 
his chair, waiting with the candle in her hand. He found the key, 
and unlocked the cabinet. Without an instant’s hesitation, he drew 
out a drawer, the second of a row. The one thing in the drawer 
was a folded letter. He removed it, and put it down before him on 
tne table. “ Take it back, Noel 1” he repeated, mechanically ; “ take 
it back 1” 

^agdalen looked over his shoulder and read these lines, traced in 


552 


NO NAME. 


her husband’s handwriting, at the top of the letter : To be kept in 
your own possession, and to be opened by yourself only on the day of 
my decease . Noel Vanstone. She saw the words plainly, with the 
admiral’s name and the admiral’s address written under them. 

The Trust within reach of her hand ! The Trust traced to its hid- 
ing-place at last ! 

She took one step forward, to steal round his chair and to snatch 
the letter from the table. At the instant when she moved, he took 
it up once more, locked the cabinet, and, rising, turned and faced her. 

In the impulse of the moment, she stretched out her hand toward 
the hand in which he held the letter. The yellow candle-light fell 
full on him. The awful death-in-life of his face — the mystery of the 
sleeping body, moving in unconscious obedience to the dreaming 
mind — daunted her. Her hand trembled, and dropped again at 
her side. 

He put the key of the cabinet back in the basket, and crossed the 
room to the bureau, with the basket in one hand and the letter in 
the other. Magdalen set the candle on the table again, and watch- 
ed him. As he had opened the cabinet, so he now opened the bu- 
reau. Once more Magdalen stretched out her hand, and once more 
she recoiled before the mystery and the terror of his sleep. He put 
the letter in a drawer at the back of the bureau, and closed the 
heavy oaken lid again. “ Yes,” he said. “ Safer there, as you say, 
Noel — safer there.” So he spoke. So, time after time, the words 
that betrayed him revealed the dead man living and speaking again 
in the dream. 

Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not heard the lock 
turn. As he slowly moved away, walking back once more toward 
the middle of the room, she tried the lid. It was locked. That 
discovery made, she looked to see what he was doing next. He 
was leaving the room again, with the basket of keys in his hand. 
When her first glance overtook him, he was crossing the threshold 
of the door. 

Some inscrutable fascination possessed her, some mysterious at- 
traction drew her after him, in spite of herself. She took up the 
candle and followed him mechanically, as if she too were walking 
in her sleep. One behind the other, in slow and noiseless progress, 
they crossed the Banqueting - hall. One behind the other, they 
passed through the drawing-room, and along the corridor, and up 
the stairs. She followed him to his own door. He went in, and 
shut it behind him softly. She stopped, and looked toward the 
truckle-bed. It was pushed aside at the foot, some little distance 
away from the bedroom door. Who had moved it ? She held Hie 
candle close and looked toward the pillow, with a sudden curiosity 
and a sudden doubt. 


NO NAME. 


553 


The truckle-bed was empty. 

The discovery startled her for the moment, and for the moment 
only. Plain as the inferences were to be drawn from it, she never 
drew them. Her mind, slowly recovering the exercise of its facul- 
ties, was still under the influence of the earlier and the deeper im- 
pressions produced on it. Her mind followed the admiral into his 
room, as her body had followed him across the Banqueting-hall. 

Had he lain down again in his bed? Was he still asleep ? She 
listened at the door. Not a sound was audible in the room. She 
tried the door, and, finding it not locked, softly opened it a few 
inches and listened again. The rise and fall of his low, regular 
breathing instantly caught her ear. He was still asleep. 

She went into the room, and, shading the candle-light with her 
hand, approached the bedside to look at him. The dream was 
past ; the old man’s sleep was deep and peaceful ; his lips were still ; 
his quiet hand was laid over the coverlet in motionless repose. He 
lay with his face turned toward the right-hand side of the bed. A 
little table stood there within reach of his hand. Four objects were 
placed on it : his candle, his matches, his customary night drink of 
lemonade, and his basket of keys. 

The idea of possessing herself of his keys that night (if an oppor- 
tunity offered when the basket was not in his hand) had first crossed 
her mind when she saw him go into his room. She had lost it again 
for the moment, in the surprise of discovering the empty truckle- 
bed. She now recovered it the instant the table attracted her at- 
tention. It was useless to waste time in trying to choose the one 
key wanted from the rest — the one key was not well enough known 
to her to be readily identified. She took all the keys from the ta- 
ble, in the basket as they lay, aijd noiselessly closed the door behind 
her on leaving the room. 

The truckle-bed, as she passed it, obtruded itself again on her at- 
tention, and forced her to think of it. After a moment’s considera- 
tion, she moved the foot of the bed back to its customary position 
across the door. Whether he was in the house or out of it, the vet- 
eran might return to his deserted post at any moment. If he saw 
the bed moved from its usual place, he might suspect something 
wrong, he might rouse his master, and the loss of the keys might be 
discovered. 

Nothing happened as she descended the stairs, nothing happened 
as she passed along the corridor ; the house was as silent and as 
solitary as ever. She crossed the Banqueting-hall this time without 
hesitation; the events of the night had hardened her mind against 
all imaginary terrors. u Now I have got it !” she whispered to her- 
self, in an irrepressible outburst of exultation, as she entered the first 
of the east rooms and put her candle on the top of the old bureau. 


554 


NO NAME. 


Even yet there was a trial in store for her patience. Some mim 
utes elapsed — minutes that seemed hours — before she found the 
right key, and raised the lid of the bureau. At last she drew out 
the inner drawer ! At last she had the letter in her hand ! 

It had been sealed, but the seal was broken. She opened it on 
the spot, to make sure that she had actually possessed herself of the 
Trust before leaving the room. The end of the letter was the first 
part of it she turned to. It came to its conclusion high on the third 
page, and it was signed by Noel Yanstone. Below the name these 
lines were added in the admiral’s handwriting : 

“ This letter was received by me at the same time with the will of 
my friend, Noel Vanstone. In the event of my death, without leav- 
ing any other directions respecting it, I beg my nephew and my 
executors to understand that I consider the requests made in this 
document as absolutely binding on me. 

“Arthur Everard Bartram.” 

She left those lines unread. She just noticed that they were not 
in Noel Yanstone’s handwriting ; and, passing over them instantly, 
as immaterial to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, 
and transferred her attention to the opening sentences on the first 
page. She read these words : 

“ Dear Admiral Bartram, — When you open my Will (in which 
you are named my sole executor), you will find that I have be- 
queathed the whole residue of my estate — after payment of one leg- 
acy of five thousand pounds — to yourself. It is the purpose of my 
letter to tell you privately what the object is for which I have left 
you the fortune which is now placed in your hands. 

“ I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended — ” 

She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest, 
when her attention suddenly failed her. Something — she was too 
deeply absorbed to know what — had got between her and the let- 
ter. Was it a sound in the Banqueting-hall again? She looked 
over her shoulder at the door behind her, and listened. Nothing 
was to be heard, nothing was to be seen. She returned to the letter. 

The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity 
to read more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, at- 
tracted by a blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sen- 
tence at which she had left off. The first three words she saw riv- 
eted her attention anew — they were the first words she had met with 
in the letter which directly referred to George Bartram. In the sud- 
den excitement of that discovery, she read the rest of the sentence 


NO NAME. 


555 


eagerly, before she made any second attempt to return to the lost 
place : 

“ If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions — that is 
to say, if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my 
decease, he fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed 
him to marry, within six calendar months from that time — it is my 
desire that he shall not receive — ” 

She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when 
a hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her 
eye, and gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant. 

She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face 
with old Mazey. 

The veteran’s eyes were bloodshot ; his hand was heavy ; his list 
slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet ; and his body swayed 
to and fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condi- 
tion that night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must 
have inevitably pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form : 
u Drunk again, Mazey ; drunk again.” 

u You young Jezabel !” said the old sailor, with a leer on one side 
of his face, and a frown on the other. “ The next time you take to 
night-walking in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those 
sharp eyes of yours first, and make sure there’s nobody else night- 
walking in the garden outside. Drop it, Jezabel ! drop it !” 

Keeping fast hold of Magdalen’s arm with one hand, he took the 
letter from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, 
and locked the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never 
spoke. Her energy was gone ; her powers of resistance were crush- 
ed. The terrors of that horrible night, following one close on the 
other in reiterated shocks, had struck her down at last. She yield- 
ed as submissively, she trembled as helplessly, as the weakest wom- 
an living. 

Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemni- 
ty to a chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still 
without uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over 
it) steadied himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the 
bureau, and from that commanding position addressed Magdalen 
once more. 

“ Come and be locked up !” said old Mazey, wagging his vener- 
able head with judicial severity. “ There’ll be a court of inquiry 
to-morrow morning, and I’m witness — worse luck! — I’m witness. 
You young jade, you’ve committed burglary — that’s what you’ve 
done. His honor the admiral’s keys stolen ; his honor the admiral’s 
desk ransacked ; and his honor the admiral’s private letters broke 
ppen. Burglary ! Burglary ! Come and be locked up !” He slow- 


556 


NO NAME. 


ly recovered an upright position, with the assistance of his hands, 
backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau ; and lapsed into 
lachrymose soliloquy. “ Who’d have thought it ?” said old Mazey, 
paternally watering at the eyes. “ Take the outside of her, and 
she’s as straight as a poplar ; take the inside of her, and she’s as 
crooktd as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity ! what 
a pity !” 

“ Don’t hurt me !” said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered 
up to the chair, and took her by the wrist again. “ I’m frightened, 
Mr. Mazey — I’m dreadfully frightened.” 

u Hurt you ?” repeated the veteran. “ I’m a deal too fond of you 
— and more shame for me at my age ! — to hurt you. If I let go of 
your wrist, will you walk straight before me, where I can see you 
all the way ? Will you be a good girl, and walk straight up to your 
own door ?” 

Magdalen gave the promise required of her — gave it with an 
eager longing to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried 
to take the candle from the bureau, but old Mazey’s cunning hand 
was too quick for her. “ Let the candle be,” said the veteran, wink- 
ing in momentary forgetfulness of his responsible position. “ You’re 
a trifle quicker on your legs than I am, my dear, and you might 
leave me in the lurch, if I don’t carry the light.” 

They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering 
after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle 
in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the 
straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness 
of Sin, all the way across “ Freeze-your-Bones,” and all the way up 
stairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptori- 
ly refused to give her the candle until he had first seen her safely 
inside the room. The conditions being complied with, he resigned 
the light with one hand, and made a dash with the other at the 
key, drew it from the inside of the lock, and instantly closed the 
door. Magdalen heard him outside chuckling over his own dex 
terity, and fitting the key into the lock again with infinite difficulty. 
At last he secured the door, with a deep grunt of relief. “ There 
she is safe !” Magdalen heard him say, in regretful soliloquy. u As 
fine a girl as ever I set eyes on. What a pity ! what a pity !” 

The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she 
was left alone in her room. 

Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to 
ciie corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always 
burning. He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself 
against the opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged con- 
templation of his own resting-place for the night apparently failed 


NO NAME. 


557 


to satisfy him. He shook his head ominously, and, taking from 
the side-pocket of his great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, sur- 
veyed them with an aspect of illimitable doubt. “ I’m all abroad 
to-night,” he mumbled to himself. “ Troubled in my mind — that’s 
what it is — troubled in my mind.” 

The old patched slippers and the veteran’s existing perplexities 
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the re- 
lation of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, 
who had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular 
pair, and who still persisted in wearing them long after they were 
unfit for his service. Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the 
slippers to the village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, be- 
fore his master called for them the next morning. He sat super- 
intending the progress and completion of the work until evening 
came, when he and the cobbler betook themselves to the village 
inn to drink each other’s healths at parting. They had prolonged 
this social ceremony till far into the night ; and they had parted, 
as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect state of intoxi- 
cation on either side. 

If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night 
wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey 
the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably 
have presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of 
the praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence 
had sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through 
the interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He 
had committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In 
plainer words, he had deserted his post. 

The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram’s constitutional tend- 
ency to somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faith- 
ful old servant kept outside his door. No entreaties had ever pre- 
vailed on him to submit to the usual precaution taken in such cases. 
He peremptorily declined to be locked into his room ; he even ig- 
nored his own liability, whenever a dream disturbed him, to walk 
in his sleep. Over and over again, old Mazey had been roused by 
the admiral’s attempts to push past the truckle-bed, or to step 
over it, in his sleep ; and over and over again, when the veteran 
had reported the fact the next morning, his master had declined to 
believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant inquiry 
at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose confusedly 
on his memory, and forced on him the serious question whether the 
admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the night. If 
by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the slippers 
in old Mazey’s hand pointed straight to the conclusion that follow- 
ed — his master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over the 


558 


NO NAME, 


stone stairs and passages of St. Crux. “ Lord send he’s been quiet !’ f 
muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, 
by the bare contemplation of that prospect. “ If his honor’s been 
walking to-night, it will be the death of him !” 

He roused himself for the moment by main force — strong in his 
dog-like fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing else — and 
fought off the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with 
steadier eyes and a clearer mind. Magdalen’s precaution in return- 
ing it to its customary position presented it to him necessarily in 
the aspect of a bed which had never been moved from its place. 
He next examined the counterpane carefully. Not the faintest ves- 
tige appeared of the indentation which must have been left by foot- 
steps passing over it. There was the plain evidence before him — 
the evidence recognizable at last by his own bewildered eyes — that 
the admiral had never moved from his room. “ I’ll take the Pledge 
to-morrow !” mumbled old Mazey, in an outburst of grateful relief. 
The next moment the fumes of the liquor flowed back insidiously 
over his brain ; and the veteran, returning to his customary remedy, 
paced the passage in zigzag as usual, and kept watch on the deck 
of an imaginary ship. 

Soon after sunrise, Magdalen suddenly heard the grating of the 
key from outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and 
old Mazey re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his 
intoxication had cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. 
He breathed harder than ever, in a succession of low growls, and 
wagged his venerable head at his own delinquencies without inter- 
mission. 

“ How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats ?” in- 
quired the old sailor. “ Has your conscience been quiet enough to 
let you go to sleep ?” 

“ I have not slept,” said Magdalen, drawing back from him in 
doubt of what he might do next. “ I have no remembrance of 
what happened after you locked the door — I think I must have 
fainted. Don’t frighten me again, Mr. Mazey ! I feel miserably 
weak and ill. What do you want ?” 

“ I want to say something serious,” replied old Mazey, with im- 
penetrable solemnity. “ It’s been on my mind to come here and 
make a clean breast of it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, 
young woman. I’m going to disgrace myself.” 

Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in 
rising alarm. 

“ I know my duty to his honor the admiral,” proceeded old Ma- 
zey, waving his hand drearily in the direction of his master’s door. 
u But, try as hard as I may, I can’t find it in my heart, you young 


NO NAME* 


559 


jade, to be witness against you. I liked the make of you (especial- 
ly about the waist) when you first came into the house, and I can’t 
help liking the make of you still — though you have committed bur- 
glary, and though you are as crooked as Sin. I’ve cast the eyes of 
indulgence on fine-grown girls all my life, and it’s too late in the 
day to cast the eyes of severity on ’em now. I’m seventy-seven, or 
seventy-eight, I don’t rightly know which. I’m a battered old 
hulk, with my seams opening, and my pumps choked, and the wa- 
ters of Death powering in on me as fast as they can. I’m as miser- 
able a sinner as you’ll meet with anywhere in these parts — Thomas 
Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted ; and he’s worse than I am, for 
he’s the youngest of the two, and he ought to know better. But 
the long and short of it is, I shall go down to my grave with an eye 
of indulgence for a fine- grown girl. More shame for me, you young 
Jezabel — more shame for me !” 

The veteran’s unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of 
him, as he concluded his harangue in these terms : the last reserves 
of austerity left in his face intrenched themselves dismally round 
the corners of his mouth. Magdalen approached him again, and 
tried to speak. He solemnly motioned her back with another 
dreary wave of his hand. 

“ No carneying !” said old Mazey ; “ I’m bad enough already, 
without that. It’s my duty to make my report to his honor the ad- 
miral, and I will make it. But if you like to give the house the 
slip before the burglary’s reported, and the court of inquiry begins, 
I’ll disgrace myself by letting you go. It’s market morning at Os- 
sory, and Dawkes will be driving the light cart over in a quarter of 
an hour’s time. Dawkes will take you if I ask him. I know my 
duty — my duty is to turn the key on you, and see Dawkes damned 
first. But I can’t find it in my heart to be hard on a fine girl like 
you. It’s bred in the bone, and it wunt come out of the flesh. 
More shame for me, I tell you again— more shame for me !” 

The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took 
Magdalen completely by surprise. She had been far too seriously 
shaken by the events of the night to be capable of deciding on 
any subject at a moment’s notice. “ You are very good to me, Mr. 
Mazey,” she said. “ May I have a minute by myself to think ?” 

u Yes, you may,” replied the veteran, facing about forthwith, and 
leaving the room. u They’re all alike,” proceeded old Mazey, with 
his head still running on the sex. “ Whatever you offer ’em, they 
always want something more. Tall and short, native and foreign, 
sweethearts and wives, they’re all alike !” 

Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difll- 
culty than she had anticipated. 

If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before 


560 


NO NAME. 


her — to charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a 
drunken delusion, or to submit to circumstances. Though she owed 
to the old sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his considera- 
tion for her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at 
his expense — even supposing, what was in the last degree improba- 
ble, that the defense would be credited. In the second of the two 
cases (the case of submission to circumstances), but one result could 
be expected — instant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well. 
What object was to be gained by braving that degradation — by 
leaving the house publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants 
who had hated and distrusted her from the first ? The accident 
which had literally snatched the Trust from her possession when 
she had it in her hand was irreparable. The one apparent compen- 
sation under the disaster — in other words, the discovery that the 
Trust actually existed, and that George Bartram’s marriage within 
a given time was one of the objects contained in it — was a compen- 
sation which could only be estimated at its true value by placing it 
under the light of Mr. Loscombe’s experience. Every motive of 
which she was conscious was a motive which urged her to leave the 
house secretly while the chance was at her disposal. She looked 
out into the passage, and called softly to old Mazey to come back. 

“I accept your offer thankfully, Mr. Mazey,” she said. “You 
don’t know what hard measure you dealt out to me when you took 
that letter from my hand. But you did your duty, and I can be 
grateful to you for sparing me this morning, hard as you were upon 
me last night. I am not such a bad girl as you think me — I am not, 
indeed.” 

Old Mazey dismissed the subject with another dreary wave of his 
hand. 

“ Let it be,” said the veteran, “ let it be ! It makes no difference, 
my girl, to such an old rascal as I am. If you were fifty times worse 
than you are, I should let you go all the same. Put on your bonnet 
and shawl, and come along. I’m a disgrace to myself and a warn- 
ing to others — that’s what I am. No luggage, mind ! Leave all 
your rattle-traps behind you : to be overhauled, if necessary, at his 
honor the admiral’s discretion. I can be hard enough on your 
boxes, you young Jezabel, if I can’t be hard on you .” 

With these words, old Mazey led the way out of the room. “ The 
less I see of her the better — especially about the waist,” he said to 
himself, as he hobbled down stairs with the help of the banisters. 

The cart was standing in the back yard when they reached the 
lower regions of the house, and Dawkes (otherwise the farm-bailiff’s 
man) was fastening the last buckle of the horse’s harness. The hoar- 
frost of the morning was still white in the shade. The sparkling 
points of it glistened brightly on the shaggy coats of Brutus and 


NO NAME. 


561 


Cassius, as they idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths 
and slowly wagging tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went 
out alone and used his influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid 
amazement, put a leather cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow- 
traveler. Shivering in the sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, 
while the preliminaries of departure were in progress, conscious of 
nothing but a giddy bewilderment of thought, and a helpless sus- 
pension of feeling. The events of the night confused themselves 
hideously with the trivial circumstances passing before her eyes in 
the court-yard. She started with the sudden terror of the night 
when old Mazey re-appeared to summon her out to the cart. She 
trembled with the helpless confusion of the night when the veteran 
cast the eyes of indulgence on her for the last time, and gave her a 
kiss on the cheek at parting. The next minute she felt him help 
her into the cart, and pat her on the back. The next, she heard 
him tell her in a confidential whisper that, sitting or standing, she 
was as straight as a poplar either way. Then there was a pause, in 
which nothing was said, and nothing done ; and then the driver 
took the reins in hand and mounted to his place. 

She roused herself at the parting moment and looked back. The 
last sight she saw at St. Crux was old Mazey wagging his head in 
the court-yard, with his fellow-profligates, the dogs, keeping time 
to him with their tails. The last words she heard were the words 
in which the veteran paid his farewell tribute to her charms : 

“ Burglary, or no burglary,” said old Mazey, “ she’s a fine-grown 
girl, if ever there was a fine one yet. What a pity ! what a pity !” 

THE END OF THE SEVENTH SCENE. 


BETWEEN THE SCENES. 

PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. 


I. 

From George Bartram to Admiral Bartram. 

“ London, April 3d, 1848. 

“ My dear Uncle, — One hasty line, to inform you of a temporary 
obstacle, which we neither of us anticipated when we took leave of 
each other at St. Crux. While I was wasting the last days of the 
week at the Grange, the Tyrrels must have been making their ar 
rangements for leaving London. I have just come from Portland 


662 


NO NAME. 


Place. The house is shut up, and the family (Miss Yanstone, of 
course, included) left England yesterday, to pass the season in Paris. 

“ Pray don’t let yourself be annoyed by this little check at start- 
ing. It is of no serious importance whatever. I have got the ad- 
dress at which the Tyrrels are living, and I mean to cross the Chan- 
nel after them by the mail to-night. I shall find my opportunity in 
Paris just as soon as I could have found it in London. The grass 
shall not grow under my feet, I promise you. For once in my life, 
I will take Time as fiercely by the forelock as if I was the most im- 
petuous man in England; and, rely on it, the moment I know the 
result, you shall know the result too. 

“Affectionately yours, George Bartram.” 


II. 

From George Bartram to Miss Garth. 

“ Paris, April 13th. 

“ Dear Miss Garth, — I have just written, with a heavy heart, to 
my uncle, and I think I owe it to your kind interest in me not to 
omit writing next to you. 

“ You will feel for my disappointment, I am sure, when I tell you, 
in the fewest and plainest words, that Miss Yanstone has refused me. 

“ My vanity may have grievously misled me, but I confess I ex- 
pected a very different result. My vanity may be misleading me 
still ; for I must acknowledge to you privately, that I think Miss 
Yanstone was sorry to refuse me. The reason she gave for her de- 
cision — no doubt a sufficient reason in her estimation — did not at 
the time, and does not now, seem sufficient to me. She spoke in 
the sweetest and kindest manner, but she firmly declared that ‘ her 
family misfortunes’ left her no honorable alternative — but to think 
of my own interests as I had not thought of them myself — and 
gratefully to decline accepting my offer. 

“ She was so painfully agitated that I could not venture to plead 
my own cause as I might otherwise have pleaded it. At the first 
attempt I made to touch the personal question, she entreated me to 
spare her, and abruptly left the room. I am still ignorant whether 
I am to interpret the ‘ family misfortunes ’ which have set up this 
barrier between us, as meaning the misfortune for which her parents 
alone are to blame, or the misfortune of her having such a woman 
as Mrs. Noel Yanstone for her sister. In whichever of these circum- 
stances the obstacle lies, it is no obstacle in my estimation. Can 
nothing remove it? Is there no hope? Forgive me for asking 
these questions. I can not bear up against my bitter disappoint 
ment. Neither she, nor you, nor any one but myself, can kno\i 
how I love her. 

“ Ever most truly yours, 


George Bartram. 


NO NAME* 


563 


“ P.S. — I shall leave for England in a day or two, passing through 
London on my way to St. Crux. There are family reasons, connect- 
ed with the hateful subject of money, which make me look forward 
with any thing but pleasure to my next interview with my uncle. If 
you address your letter to Long’s Hotel, it will be sure to reach me.” 

m. 

From Miss Garth to George Bartram. 

“ Westmoreland House, April 16th. 

“ Dear Mr. Bartram, — You only did me justice in supposing 
that your letter would distress me. If you had supposed that it 
would make me excessively angry as well, you would not have been 
far wrong. I have no patience with the pride and perversity of the 
young women of the present day. 

“ I have heard from Norah. It is a long letter, stating the par- 
ticulars in full detail. I am now going to put all the confidence in 
your honor and your discretion which I really feel. For your sake, 
and for Norah’s, I am going to let you know what the scruple really 
is which has misled her into the pride and folly of refusing you. I 
am old enough to speak out ; and I can tell you, if she had only 
been wise enough to let her own wishes guide her, she would have 
said Yes — and gladly too. 

** The original cause of all the mischief is no less a person than 
your worthy uncle — Admiral Bartram. 

“ It seems that the admiral took it into his head (I suppose dur- 
ing your absence) to go to London by himself and to satisfy some 
curiosity of his own about Norah by calling in Portland Place, un- 
der pretense of renewing his old friendship with the Tyrrels. He 
came at luncheon-time, and saw Norah ; and, from all I can hear, 
was apparently better pleased with her than he expected or wished 
to be when he came into the house. 

“ So far, this is mere guess-work ; but it is unluckily certain that 
he and Mrs. Tyrrel had some talk together alone when luncheon 
was over. Your name was not mentioned ; but when their conver- 
sation fell on Norah, you were in both their minds, of course. The 
admiral (doing her full justice personally) declared himself smitten 
with pity for her hard lot in life. The scandalous conduct of her 
sister must always stand (he feared) in the way of her future ad- 
vantage. Who could marry her, without first making it a condition 
that she and her sister were to be absolute strangers to each other ? 
And even then, the objection would remain — the serious objection 
to the husband’s family — of being connected by marriage with such 
& woman as Mrs. Noel Yanstone. It was very sad ; it was not the 
poor girl’s fault, but it was none the less true that her sister was her 
rock ahead in life. So he ran on, with no real ill-feeling toward 


564 


NO NAME. 


Norah, but with an obstinate belief in his own prejudices which bore 
the aspect of ill-feeling, and which people with more temper than 
judgment would be but too readily disposed to resent accordingly. 

“ Unfortunately, Mrs. Tyrrel is one of those people. She is an ex- 
cellent, warm-hearted woman, with a quick temper and very little 
judgment ; strongly attached to Norah, and heartily interested in 
Norah’s welfare. From all I can learn, she first resented the ex- 
pression of the admiral’s opinion, in his presence, as worldly and 
selfish in the last degree ; and then interpreted it behind his back, 
as a hint to discourage his nephew’s visits, which was a downright 
insult offered to a lady in her own house. This was foolish enough 
so far ; but worse folly was to come. 

“ As soon as your uncle was gone, Mrs. Tyrrel, most unwisely and 
improperly, sent for Norah, and, repeating the conversation that had 
taken place, warned her of the reception she might expect from the 
man who stood toward you in the position of a father, if she accept- 
ed an offer of marriage on your part. When I tell you that Norah’s 
faithful attachment to her sister still remains unshaken, and that 
there lies hidden under her noble submission to the unhappy cir- 
cumstances of her life, a proud susceptibility to slights of all kinds, 
which is deeply seated in her nature — you will understand the true 
motive of the refusal which has so naturally and so justly disap- 
pointed you. They are all three equally to blame in this matter. 
Your uncle was wrong to state his objections so roundly and incon- 
siderately as he did. Mrs. Tyrrel was wrong to let her temper get 
the better of her, and to suppose herself insulted where no insult 
was intended. And Norah was wrong to place a scruple of pride, 
and a hopeless belief in her sister which no strangers can be expect- 
ed to share, above the higher claims of an attachment which might 
have secured the happiness and the prosperity of her future life. 

“ But the mischief has been done. The next question is, Can the 
harm be remedied ? 

“ I hope and believe it can. My advice is this : Don’t take No for 
an answer. Give her time enough to reflect on what she has done, 
and to regret it (as I believe she will regret it) in secret ; trust to 
my influence over her to plead your cause for you at every opportu- 
nity I can find ; wait patiently for the right moment, and ask her 
again. Men, being accustomed to act on reflection themselves, are 
a great deal too apt to believe that women act on reflection too. 
Women do nothing of the sort. They act on impulse ; and, in nine 
cases out of ten, they are heartily sorry for it afterward. 

“ In the mean while, you must help your own interests, by indu- 
cing your uncle to alter his opinion, or at least to make the conces- 
sion of keeping his opinion to himself. Mrs. Tyrrel has rushed to 
the conclusion that the harm he has done he did intentionally—' 


NO NAME. 


565 


which is as much as to say, in so many words, that he had a pro- 
phetic conviction, when he came into the house, of what she would 
do when he left it. My explanation of the matter is a much simpler 
one. I believe that the knowledge of your attachment naturally 
aroused his curiosity to see the object of it, and that Mrs. Tyrrel’s 
injudicious praises of Norah irritated his objections into openly de- 
claring themselves. Any way, your course lies equally plain before 
you. Use your influence over your uncle to persuade him into set- 
ting matters right again ; trust my settled resolution to see Norah 
your wife before six months more are over our heads ; and believe 
me, your friend and well-wisher, Harriet Garth.” 

IV. 

From Mrs. Drake to George Bartram. 

“ St. Crux, April 17th. 

“ Sir, — I direct these lines to the hotel you usually stay at in 
London, hoping that you may return soon enough from foreign parts 
to receive my letter without delay. 

“ I am sorry to say that some unpleasant events have taken place 
at St. Crux since you left it, and that my honored master, the ad- 
miral, is far from enjoying his usual good health. On both these 
accounts, I venture to write to you on my own responsibility, for I 
think your presence is needed in the house. 

“ Early in the month a most regretable circumstance took place. 
Our new parlor-maid was discovered by Mr. Mazey, at a late hour of 
the night (with her master’s basket of keys in her possession), pry- 
ing into the private documents kept in the east library. The girl 
removed herself from the house the next morning before we were 
any of us astir, and she has not been heard of since. This event has 
annoyed and alarmed my master very seriously ; and to make mat- 
ters worse, on the day when the girl’s treacherous conduct was dis- 
covered, the admiral was seized with the first symptoms of a severe 
inflammatory cold. He was not himself aware, nor was any one else, 
how he had caught the chill. The doctor was sent for, and kept 
the inflammation down until the day before yesterday, when it broke 
out again, under circumstances which I am sure you will be sorry to 
hear, as I am truly sorry to write of them. 

“ On the date I have just mentioned — I mean the fifteenth of the 
month — my master himself informed me that he had been dreadful- 
ly disappointed by a letter received from you, which had come in 
the morning from foreign parts, and had brought him bad news. 
He did not tell me what the news was — but I have never, in all the 
years I have passed in the admiral’s service, seen him so distressing- 
ly upset, and so unlike himself, as he was on that day. At night his 
uneasiness seemed to increase. He was in such a state of irritation, 


566 


NO NAME. 


that he could not bear the sound of Mr. Mazey’s hard breathing out- 
side his door, and he laid his positive orders on the old man to go 
into one of the bedrooms for that night. Mr. Mazey, to his own 
great regret, was of course obliged to obey. 

“ Our only means of preventing the admiral from leaving his room 
in his sleep, if the fit unfortunately took him, being now removed, 
Mr. Mazey and I agreed to keep watch by turns through the night, 
sitting, with the door ajar, in one of the empty rooms near our mas- 
ter’s bed-chamber. We could think of nothing better to do than 
this, knowing he would not allow us to lock him in, and not having 
the door key in our possession, even if we could have ventured to se- 
cure him in his room without his permission. I kept watch for the 
first two hours, and then Mr. Mazey took my place. After having 
been come little time in my own room, it occurred to me that the old 
man was hard of hearing, and that if his eyes grew at all heavy in 
the night, his ears were not to be trusted to warn him if any thing 
happened. I slipped on my clothes again, and went back to Mr. 
Mazey. He was neither asleep nor awake — he was between the two. 
My mind misgave me, and I went on to the admiral’s room. The 
door was open, and the bed was empty. 

“ Mr. Mazey and I w T ent down stairs instantly. We looked in all 
the north rooms, one after another, and found no traces of him. I 
thought of the drawing-room next, and, being the most active of 
the two, went first to examine it. The moment I turned the sharp 
corner of the passage, I saw my master coming toward me through 
the open drawing-room door, asleep and dreaming, with his keys in 
his hands. The sliding door behind him was open also ; and the 
fear came to me then, and has remained with me ever since, that his 
dream had led him through the Banqueting-hall into the east rooms. 
We abstained from waking him, and followed his steps until he re- 
turned of his own accord to his bed-chamber. The next morning, 
I grieve to say, all the bad symptoms came back ; and none of the 
remedies employed have succeeded in getting the better of them 
yet. By the doctor’s advice, we refrained from telling the admiral 
what had happened. He is still under the impression that he passed 
the night as usual in his own room. 

“I have been careful to enter into all the particulars of this un 
fortunate accident, because neither Mr. Mazey nor myself desire to 
screen ourselves from blame, if blame we have deserved. We both 
acted for the best, and we both beg and pray you will consider our 
responsible situation, and come as soon as possible to St. Crux. Our 
honored master is very hard to manage ; and the doctor thinks, as 
we do, that your presence is wanted in the house. 

“ I remain, sir, with Mr. Mazey’s respects and my own, your hum 
ble servant, Sophia Drake.” 


NO NAME. 


56? 


V. 

From George Bartram to Miss Garth. 

“ St. Crux, April 22d. 

“ Dear Miss Garth, — Pray excuse my not thanking you sooner 
for your kind and consoling letter. We are in sad trouble at St. 
Crux. Any little irritation I might have felt at my poor uncle’s 
unlucky interference in Portland Place is all forgotten in the mis- 
fortune of his serious illness. He is suffering from internal inflam- 
mation, produced by cold ; and symptoms have shown themselves 
which are dangerous at his age. A physician from London is now 
in the house. You shall hear more in a few days. Meantime, be- 
lieve me, with sincere gratitude, 

“ Yours most truly, George Bartram.” 

VI. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields, May 6th. 

“ Dear Madam, — I have unexpectedly received some information 
which is of the most vital importance to your interests. The news 
of Admiral Bartram’s death has reached me this morning. He ex- 
pired at his own house, on the fourth of the present month. 

“ This event at once disposes of the considerations which I had 
previously endeavored to impress on you, in relation to your discov- 
ery at St. Crux. The wisest course we can now follow is to open 
communications at once with the executors of the deceased gentle- 
man ; addressing them through the medium of the admiral’s legal 
adviser, in the first instance. 

“ I have dispatched a letter this day to the solicitor in question. 
It simply warns him that we have lately become aware of the ex- 
istence of a private Document, controlling the deceased gentleman 
in his use of the legacy devised to him by Mr. Noel Vanstone’s will. 
My letter assumes that the document will be easily found among 
the admiral’s papers ; and it mentions that I am the solicitor ap- 
pointed by Mrs. Noel Vanstone to receive communications on her 
behalf. My object in taking this step is to cause a search to be in- 
stituted for the Trust — in the very probable event of the executors 
not having met with it yet — before the usual measures are adopted 
for the administration of the admiral’s estate. We will threaten 
legal proceedings, if we find that the object does not succeed. But 
I anticipate no such necessity. Admiral Bartram’s executors must 
be men of high standing and position ; and they will do justice to 
you and to themselves in this matter by looking for the Trust. 

“ Under these circumstances, you will naturally ask, 6 What are 
Dur prospects when the document is found V Our prospects have 


568 


NO NAME. 


a bright side and a dark side. Let us take the bright side to begin 
with. 

u What do we actually know ? 

“We know, first, that the Trust does really exist. Secondly, that 
there is a provision in it relating to the marriage of Mr. George Bar- 
tram in a given time. Thirdly, that the time (six months from the 
date of your husband’s death) expired on the third of this month. 
Fourthly, that Mr. George Bartram (as I have found out by inquiry, 
in the absence of any positive information on the subject possessed 
by yourself) is, at the present moment, a single man. The conclu- 
sion naturally follows, that the object contemplated by the Trust, in 
this case, is an object that has failed. 

“ If no other provisions have been inserted in the document — or 
if, being inserted, those other provisions should be discovered to 
have failed also — I believe it to be impossible (especially if evi- 
dence can be found that the admiral himself considered the Trust 
binding on him) for the executors to deal with your husband’s for- 
tune as legally forming part of Admiral Bartram’s estate. The leg- 
acy is expressly declared to have been left to him, on the under- 
standing that he applies it to certain stated objects — and those ob- 
jects have failed. What is to be done with the money ? It was 
not left to the admiral himself, on the testator’s own showing ; and 
the purposes for which it was left have not been, and can not be, 
carried out. I believe (if the case here supposed really happens), 
that the money must revert to the testator’s estate. In that event, 
the Law, dealing with it as a matter of necessity, divides it into two 
equal portions. One half goes to Mr. Noel Yanstone’s childless wid- 
ow, and the other half is divided among Mr. Noel Yanstone’s next 
of kin. 

“You will no doubt discover the obvious objection to the case in 
our favor, as I have here put it. You will see that it depends for 
its practical realization not on one contingency, but on a series of 
contingencies, which must all happen exactly as we wish them to 
happen. I admit the force of the objection ; but I can tell you, at 
the same time, that these said contingencies are by no means so im- 
probable as they may look on the face of them. 

“We have every reason to believe that the Trust, like the Will, 
was not drawn by a lawyer. That is one circumstance in our favoi 
— that is enough of itself to cast a doubt on the soundness of all, or 
any, of the remaining provisions which we may not be acquainted 
with. Another chance which we may count on is to be found, as 
I think, in that strange handwriting, placed under the signature on 
the third page of the Letter, which you saw, but which you, unhap- 
pily, omitted to read. All the probabilities point to those lines as 
written by Admiral Bartram ; and the position wCich they occupy 


NO NAME. 


569 


is certainly consistent with the theory that they touch the impor- 
tant subject of his own sense of obligation under the Trust. 

“ I wish to raise no false hopes in your mind. I only desire to 
satisfy you that we have a case worth trying. 

“As for the dark side of the prospect, I need not enlarge on it. 
After what I have already written, you will understand that the 
existence of a sound provision, unknown to us, in the Trust, which 
has been properly carried out by the admiral — or which can be prop- 
erly carried out by his representatives — would be necessarily fatal 
to our hopes. The legacy would be, in this case, devoted to the 
purpose or purposes contemplated by your husband — and, from that 
moment, you would have no claim. 

“ I have only to add, that as soon as I hear from the late admiral’s 
man of business, you shall know the result. 

“ Believe me, dear madam, faithfully yours, 

“John Loscombe.” 


VII. 

From George Bartram to Miss Garth . 

“ St. Crux, May 15th. 

“ Dear Miss Garth, — I trouble you with another letter : partly 
to thank you for your kind expression of sympathy with me, under 
the loss that I have sustained ; and partly to tell you of an extraor- 
dinary application made to my uncle’s executors, in which you and 
Miss Vanstone may both feel interested, as Mrs. Noel Vanstone is 
directly concerned in it. 

“ Knowing my own ignorance of legal technicalities, I inclose a 
copy of the application, instead $f trying to describe it. You will 
notice, as suspicious, that no explanation is given of the manner in 
which the alleged discovery of one of my uncle’s secrets was made, 
by persons who are total strangers to him. 

“On being made acquainted with the circumstances, the execu- 
tors at once applied to me. I could give them no positive informa- 
tion — for my uncle never consulted me on matters of business. But 
I felt in honor bound to tell them, that during the last six months 
of his life, the admiral had occasionally let fall expressions of impa- 
tience in my hearing, which led to the conclusion that he was an- 
noyed by a private responsibility of some kind. I also mentioned 
that he had imposed a very strange condition on me — a condition 
which, in spite of his own assurances to the contrary, I was per- 
suaded could not have emanated from himself — of marrying within 
a given time (which time has now expired), or of not receiving from 
him a certain sum of money, which I believed to be the same in 
amount as the sum bequeathed to him in my cousin’s will. The ex- 
ecutors agreed with me that these circumstances gave a color of 


670 


NO NAME. 


probability to an otherwise incredible story ; and they decided that 
a search should be instituted for the Secret Trust, nothing in the 
slightest degree resembling this same Trust having been discovered, 
up to that time, among the admiral’s papers. 

“ The search (no trifle in such a house as this) has now been in 
full progress for a week. It is superintended by both the executors, 
and by my uncle’s lawyer, who is personally, as well as profession- 
ally, known to Mr. Loscombe (Mrs. Noel Yanstone’s solicitor), and 
who has been included in the proceedings at the express request of 
Mr. Loscombe himself. Up to this time, nothing whatever has been 
found. Thousands and thousands of letters have been examined, 
and not one of them bears the remotest resemblance to the letter we 
are looking for. 

“ Another week will bring the search to an end. It is only at my 
express request that it will be persevered with so long. But as the 
admiral’s generosity has made me sole heir to every thing he pos- 
sessed, I feel bound to do the fullest justice to the interests of oth- 
ers, however hostile to myself those interests may be. 

u With this view, I have not hesitated to reveal to the lawyer a 
constitutional peculiarity of my poor uncle’s, which was always kept 
a secret among us at his own request — I mean his tendency to som- 
nambulism. I mentioned that he had been discovered (by the house- 
keeper and his old servant) walking in his sleep, about three weeks 
before his death, and that the part of the house in which he had 
been seen, and the basket of keys which he was carrying in his 
hand, suggested the inference that he had come from one of the 
rooms in the east wing, and that he might have opened some of the 
pieces of furniture in one of them". I surprised the lawyer (who 
seemed to be quite ignorant of the extraordinary actions constantly 
performed by somnambulists), by informing him that my uncle could 
find his way about the house, lock and unlock doors, and remove 
objects of all kinds from one place to another, as easily in his sleep 
as in his waking hours. And I declared that, while I felt the faint- 
est doubt in my own mind whether he might not have been dream- 
ing of the Trust on the night in question, and putting the dream in 
action in his sleep, I should not feel satisfied unless the rooms in the 
east wing were searched again. 

“ It is only right to add that there is not the least foundation in 
fact for this idea of mine. During the latter part of his fatal illness, 
my poor uncle was quite incapable of speaking on any subject what- 
ever. From the time of my arrival at St. Crux, in the middle of last 
month, to the time of his death, not a word dropped from him which 
referred in the remotest way to the Secret Trust. 

“ Here then, for the present, the matter rests. If you think it 
right to communicate the contents of this letter to Miss Yanstone, 


NO NAME. 


571 


pray tell her that it will not be my fault if her sister’s assertion 
(however preposterous it may seem to my uncle’s executors) is not 
fairly put to the proof. 

“ Believe me, dear Miss Garth, always truly yours, 

“ George Bartram. 

“P.S. — As soon as all business matters are settled, I am going 
abroad for some months, to try the relief of change of scene. The 
house will be shut up, and left under the charge of Mrs. Drake. I 
have not forgotten your once telling me that you should like to see 
St. Crux, if you ever found yourself in this neighborhood. If you 
are at all likely to be in Essex during the time when I am abroad, 
I have provided against the chance of your being disappointed, by 
leaving instructions with Mrs. Drake to give you, and any friends 
of yours, the freest admission to the house and grounds.” 

vin. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone. 

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields, May 24th. 

“ Dear Madam, — After a whole fortnight’s search — conducted, 
I am bound to admit, with the most conscientious and unrelaxing 
care — no such document as the Secret Trust has been found among 
the papers left at St. Crux by the late Admiral Bartram. 

“ Under these circumstances, the executors have decided on act- 
ing under the only recognizable authority which they have to guide 
them — the admiral’s own will. This document (executed some 
years since) bequeaths the whole of his estate, both real and per- 
sonal (that is to say, all the lands he possesses, and all the money 
he possesses, at the time of his death), to his nephew. The will is 
plain, and the result is inevitable. Your husband’s fortune is lost 
to you from this moment. Mr. George Bartram legally inherits it, 
as he legally inherits the house and estate of St. Crux. 

“I make no comment upon this extraordinary close to the pro- 
ceedings. The Trust may have been destroyed, or the Trust may 
be hidden in some place of concealment inaccessible to discovery. 
Either way, it is, in my opinion, impossible to found any valid legal 
declaration on a knowledge of the document so fragmentary and so 
incomplete as the knowledge which you possess. If other lawyers 
differ from me on this point, by all means consult them. I have de- 
voted money enough and time enough to the unfortunate attempt 
to assert your interests ; and my connection with the matter must, 
from this moment, be considered at an end. 

“ Your obedient servant, John Loscombe.” 


572 


NO NAME. 


IX. 

From Mrs. Ruddock (. Lodging-house Keeper) to Mr. Loscombe. 

“Park Terrace, St. John’s Wood, June 2d. 

“ Sir, — H aying, by Mrs. Noel Yanstone’s directions, taken letters 
for her to the post, addressed to you — and knowing no one else to 
apply to — I beg to inquire whether you are acquainted with any of 
her friends ; for I think it right that they should be stirred up to 
take some steps about her. 

“ Mrs. Yanstone first came to me in November last, when she and 
her maid occupied my apartments. On that occasion, and again 
on this, she has given me no cause to complain of her. She has be- 
haved like a lady, and paid me my due. I am writing, as a mother 
of a family, under a sense of responsibility— I am not writing with 
an interested motive. 

“After proper warning given, Mrs. Yanstone (who is now quite 
alone) leaves me to-morrow. She has not concealed from me that 
her circumstances are fallen very low, and that she can not afford to 
remain in my house. This is all she has told me — I know nothing 
of where she is going, or what she means to do next. But I have 
every reason to believe she desires to destroy all traces by which 
she might be found, after leaving this place — for I discovered her 
in tears yesterday, burning letters which were doubtless letters from 
her friends. In looks and conduct she has altered most shockingly 
in the last week. I believe there is some dreadful trouble on her 
mind ; and I am afraid, from what I see of her, that she is on the 
eve of a serious illness. It is very sad to see such a young woman 
so utterly deserted and friendless as she is now. 

“ Excuse my troubling you with this letter ; it is on my con- 
science to write it. If you know any of her relations, please warn 
them that time is not to be wasted. If they lose to-morrow, they 
may lose the last chance of finding her. 

“ Your humble servant, Catherine Ruddock.” 

X. 

From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Ruddock. 

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields, June 2d. 

“ Madam, — My only connection with Mrs. Noel Yanstone was a 
professional one, and that connection is now at an end. I am not 
acquainted with any of her friends ; and I can not undertake to in- 
terfere personally, either with her present or future proceedings. 

“ Regretting my inability to afford you any assistance, I remain, 
your obedient servant, John Loscombe.” 


NO NAME. 


573 


THE LAST SCENE. 

AARON’S BUILDINGS. 

CHAPTER I. 

On the seventh of June, the owners of the merchantman Deliv- 
erance received news that the ship had touched at Plymouth to 
Land passengers, and had then continued her homeward voyage to 
the Port of London. Five days later, the vessel was in the river, 
and was towed into the East India Docks. 

Having transacted the business on shore for which he was per- 
sonally responsible, Captain Kirke made the necessary arrangements 
by letter, for visiting his brother-in-law’s parsonage in Suffolk, on 
the seventeenth of the month. As usual in such cases, he received 
a list of commissions to execute for his sister on the day before he 
left London. One of these commissions took him into the neigh- 
borhood of Camden Town. He drove to his destination from the 
Docks; and then, dismissing the vehicle, set forth to walk back 
southward, toward the New Road. 

He was not well acquainted with the district; and his attention 
wandered farther and farther away from the scene around him as 
he went on. His thoughts, roused by the prospect of seeing his sis- 
ter again, had led his memory back to the night when he had part- 
ed from her, leaving the house on foot. The spell so strangely laid 
on him, in that past time, had kept its hold through all after-events. 
The face that had haunted him on the lonely road had haunted 
him again on the lonely sea. The woman who had followed him, 
as in a dream, to his sister’s door, had followed him — thought of his 
thought, and spirit of his spirit — to the deck of his ship. Through 
storm and calm on the voyage out, through storm and calm on the 
voyage home, she had been with him. In the ceaseless turmoil of 
the London streets, she was with him now. He knew what the first 
question on his lips would be, when he had seen his sister and her 
boys. “ I shall try to talk of something else,” he thought ; “ but 
when Lizzie and I are alone, it will come out in spite of me.” 

The necessity of waiting to let a string of carts pass at a turning 
before he crossed awakened him to present things. He looked 
about in a momentary confusion. The street was strange to him; 
he had lost his way. 


tl 4 


NO NAME. 


The first foot passenger of whom he inquired appeared to have 
no time to waste in giving information. Hurriedly directing him 
to cross to the other side of the road, to turn down the first street 
he came to on his right hand, and then to ask again, the stranger 
unceremoniously hastened on without waiting to be thanked. 

Kirke followed his directions and took the turning on his right. 
The street was short and narrow, and the houses on either side were 
of the poorer order. He looked up as he passed the comer to see 
what the name of the place might be. It was called “Aaron’s 
Buildings.” 

Low down on the side of the “ Buildings ” along which he was 
walking, a little crowd of idlers was assembled round two cabs, 
both drawn up before the door of the same house. Kirke advanced 
to the crowd, to ask his way of any civil stranger among them who 
might not be in a hurry this time. On approaching the cabs, he 
found a woman disputing with the drivers; and heard enough to 
inform him that two vehicles had been sent for by mistake, where 
one only was wanted. 

The house door was open ; and when he turned that way next, 
he looked easily into the passage, over the heads of the people in 
front of him. 

The sight that met his eyes should have been shielded in pity 
from the observation of the street. He saw a slatternly girl, with a 
frightened face, standing by an old chair placed in the middle of 
the passage, and holding a woman on the chair, too weak and help- 
less to support herself — a woman apparently in the last stage of ill- 
ness, who was about to be removed, when the dispute outside was 
ended, in one of the cabs. Her head was drooping when he first 
saw her, and an old shawl which covered it had fallen forward so 
as to hide the upper part of her face. 

Before he could look away again, the girl in charge of her raised 
her head and restored the shawl to its place. The action disclosed 
her face to view, for an instant only, before her head drooped once 
more on her bosom. In that instant he saw the woman whose 
beauty was the haunting remembrance of his life — whose image had 
been vivid in his mind not five minutes since. 

The shock of the dohble recognition — the recognition, at the 
same moment, of the face, and of the dreadful change in it — struck 
him speechless and helpless. The steady presence of mind in all 
emergencies which had become a habit of his life, failed him for the 
first time. The poverty-stricken street, the squalid mob round the 
door, swam before his eyes. He staggered back, and caught at the 
iron railings of the house behind him. 

“ Where are they taking her to ?” he heard a woman ask, close at 
his side. 







NO NAME. 577 

To the hospital, if they will have her,” was the reply. “ And tc 
the work-house, if they won’t.” 

That horrible answer roused him. He pushed his way through 
the crowd and entered the house. 

The misunderstanding on the pavement had been set right, and 
one of the cabs had driven off. As he crossed the threshold of the 
door he confronted the people of the house at the moment when 
they were moving her. The cabman who had remained was on one 
side of the chair, and the woman who had been disputing with the 
two drivers was on the other. They were just lifting her, when 
Kirke’s tall figure darkened the door. 

“ What are you doing with that lady ?” he asked. 

The cabman looked up with the insolence of his reply visible in 
his eyes, before his lips could utter it. But the woman, quicker than 
he, saw the suppressed agitation in Kirke’s face, and dropped her 
hold of the chair in an instant. 

“ Do you know her, sir ?” asked the woman, eagerly. “ Are you 
one of her friends ?” 

“Yes,” said Kirke, without hesitation. 

“ It’s not my fault, sir,” pleaded the woman, shrinking under the 
look he fixed on her. “ I would have waited patiently till her 
friends found her — I would, indeed I” 

Kirke made no reply. He turned, and spoke to the cabman. 

“ Go out,” he said, “ and close the door after you. I’ll send you 
down your money directly. What room in the house did you take 
her from, when you brought her here ?” he resumed, addressing him- 
self to the woman again. 

“ The first floor back, sir.” 

“ Show me the way to it.” 

He stooped, and lifted Magdalen in his arms. Her head rested 
gently on the sailor’s breast; her eyes looked up wonderingly into 
the sailor’s face. She smiled, and whispered to him vacantly. Her 
mind had wandered back to old days at home ; and her few broken 
words showed that she fancied herself a child again in her father’s 
arms. “ Poor papa !” she said, softly. “ Why do you look so sorry ? 
Poor papa !” 

The woman led the way into the back room on the first floor. It 
was very small ; it was miserably furnished. But the little bed was 
clean, and the few things in the room were neatly kept. Kirke laid 
her tenderly on the bed. She caught one of his hands in her burn- 
ing fingers. “ Don’t distress mamma about me,” she said. “ Send 
for Norah.” Kirke tried gently to release his hand ; but she only 
clasped it the more eagerly. He sat down by the bedside to wait 
until it pleased her to release him. The woman stood looking at 
them and crying, in a comer of the room. Kirke observed her ah 


578 


NO NAME. 


tentively. “ Speak,” he said, after an interval, in low, quiet tones. 
“ Speak in her presence ; and tell me the truth.” 

With many words, with many tears, the woman spoke. 

She had let her first floor to the lady a fortnight since. The lady 
had paid a week’s rent, and had given the name of Gray. She had 
been out from morning till night, for the first three days, and had 
come home again, on every occasion, with a wretchedly weary, dis- 
appointed look. The woman of the house had suspected that she 
was in hiding from her friends, under a false name ; and that she 
had been vainly trying to raise money, or to get some employment, 
on the three days when she was out for so long, and when she looked 
so disappointed on coming home. However that might be, on the 
fourth day she had fallen ill, with shivering fits and hot fits, turn 
and turn about. On the fifth day she was worse ; and on the sixth, 
she was too sleepy at one time, and too light-headed at another to 
be spoken to. The chemist (who did the doctoring in those parts) 
had come and looked at her, and had said he thought it was a bad 
fever. He had left a “ saline draught,” which the woman of the 
house had paid for out of her own pocket, and had administered 
without effect. She had ventured on searching the only box which 
the lady had brought with her ; and had found nothing in it but a 
few necessary articles of linen — no dresses, no ornaments, not so 
much as the fragment of a letter which might help in discovering 
her friends. Between the risk of keeping her under these circum- 
stances, and the barbarity of turning a sick woman into the street, 
the landlady herself had not hesitated. She would willingly have 
kept her tenant, on the chance of the lady’s recovery, and on the 
chance of friends turning up. But not half an hour since, her hus- 
band — who never came near the house, except to take her money — 
had come to rob her of her little earnings, as usual. She had been 
obliged to tell him that no rent was in hand for the first floor, and 
that none was likely to be in hand until the lady recovered, or her 
friends found her. On hearing this, he had mercilessly insisted — 
well or ill — that the lady should go. There was the hospital to 
take her to ; and if the hospital shut its doors, there was the work- 
house to try next. If she was not out of the place in an hour’s 
time, he threatened to come back and take her out himself. His 
wife knew but too well that he was brute enough to be as good as 
his word ; and no other choice had been left her but to do as she 
had done, for the sake of the lady herself. 

The woman told her shocking story, with every appearance of be- 
ing honestly ashamed of it. Toward the end, Kirke felt the clasp 
of the burning fingers slackening round his hand. He looked back 
at the bed again. Her weary eyes were closing ; and, with her face 
still turned toward the sailor, she was sinking into sleep. 


NO NAME. 


579 


“ Is there any one in the front room ?” said Kirke, in a whisper. 
“ Come in there ; I have something to say to you.” 

The woman followed him through the door of communication be- 
tween the rooms. 

“ How much does she owe you ?” he asked. 

The landlady mentioned the sum. Kirke put it down before her 
on the table. 

“ Where is your husband ?” was his next question. 

“ Waiting at the public-house, sir, till the hour is up.” 

“You can take him the money, or not, as you think right,” said 
Kirke, quietly. “ I have only one thing to tell you, as far as your 
husband is concerned. If you want to see every bone in his skin 
broken, let him come to the house while I am in it. Stop ! I have 
something more to say. Do you know of any doctor in the neigh- 
borhood who can be depended on ?” 

u Not in our neighborhood, sir. But I know of one within half 
an hour’s walk of us.” 

“ Take the cab at the door ; and, if you find him at home, bring 
him back in it. Say I am waiting here for his opinion on a very 
serious case. He shall be well paid, and you shall be well paid. 
Make haste !” 

The woman left the room. 

Kirke sat down alone, to wait for her return. He hid his face in 
his hands, and tried to realize the strange and touching situation 
in which the accident of a moment had placed him. 

Hidden in the squalid by-ways of London under a false name ; 
cast, friendless and helpless, on the mercy of strangers, by illness 
which had struck her prostrate, mind and body alike — so he met 
her again, the woman who had opened a new world of beauty to 
his mind ; the woman who had called Love to life in him by a 
look ! What horrible misfortune had struck her so cruelly, and 
struck her so low ? What mysterious destiny had guided him to 
the last refuge of her poverty and despair, in the hour of her sorest 
need ? “ If it is ordered that I am to see her again, I shall see her.” 

Those words came back to him now — the memorable words that he 
had spoken to his sister at parting. With that thought in his heart, 
he had gone where his duty called him. Months and months had 
passed ; thousands and thousands of miles, protracting their deso- 
late length on the unresting waters, had rolled between them. And 
through the lapse of time, and over the waste of oceans — day after 
day, and night after night, as the winds of heaven blew, and the 
good ship toiled on before them — he had advanced nearer and near- 
er to the end that was waiting for him ; he had journeyed blindfold 
to the meeting on the threshold of that miserable door. “What 
has brought me here ?” he said to himself in a whisper. “ The mercy 
of chance ? No. The mercy of God.” 


580 


NO NAME. 


He waited, unregardful of the place, unconscious of the time, until 
the sound of footsteps on the stairs came suddenly between him and 
his thoughts. The door opened, and the doctor was shown into the 
room. 

“ Dr. Merrick,” said the landlady, placing a chair for him. 

u Mr. Merrick,” said the visitor, smiling quietly as he took the 
chair. “ I am not a physician — I am a surgeon in general practice.” 

Physician or surgeon, there was something in his face and manner 
which told Kirke at a glance that he was a man to be relied on. 

After a few preliminary words on either side, Mr. Merrick sent 
the landlady into the bedroom to see if his patient was awake or 
asleep. The woman returned, and said she was “ betwixt the two, 
light in the head again, and burning hot.” The doctor went at 
once into the bedroom, telling the landlady to follow him, and to 
close the door behind her. 

A weary time passed before he came back into the front room. 
When he re-appeared, his face spoke for him, before any question 
could be asked. 

“ Is it a serious illness ?” said Kirke, his voice sinking low, his 
eyes anxiously fixed on the doctor’s face. 

“ It is a dangerous illness,” said Mr. Merrick, with an emphasis on 
the word. 

He drew his chair nearer to Kirke, and looked at him attentively. 

“ May I ask you some questions which are not strictly medical ?” 
he inquired. 

Kirke bowed. 

“ Can you tell me what her life has been before she came into this 
house, and before she fell ill ?” 

“ I have no means of knowing. I have just returned to England 
after a long absence.” 

“ Did you know of her coming here ?” 

“ I only discovered it by accident.” 

“ Has she no female relations ? No mother ? no sister ? no one to 
take care of her but yourself ?” 

“ No one — unless I can succeed in tracing her relations. No one 
but myself.” 

Mr. Merrick was silent. He looked at Kirke more attentively 
than ever. “ Strange !” thought the doctor. “ He is here, in sole 
charge of her — and is this all he knows ?” 

Kirke saw the doubt in his face ; and addressed himself straight 
to that doubt, before another word passed between them. 

“ I see my position here surprises you,” he said, simply. “ Will 
you consider it the position of a relation — the position of her broth- 
er or her father — until her friends can be found ?” His voice fal- 
tered, and he laid his hand earnestly on the doctor’s arm. “ I have 


NO NAME. 


581 


taken this trust on myself,” he said ; “ and, as God shall judge me, 
I will not be unworthy of it !” 

The poor weary head lay on his breast again, the poor fevered 
fingers clasped his hand once more, as he spoke those words. 

“ I believe you,” said the doctor, warmly. “ I believe you are an 
honest man. — Pardon me if I have seemed to intrude myself on your 
confidence. I respect your reserve — from this moment it is sacred 
to me. In justice to both of us, let me say that the questions I have 
asked were not prompted by mere curiosity. No common cause will 
account for the illness which has laid my patient on that bed. She 
has suffered some long-continued mental trial, some wearing and 
terrible suspense — and she has broken down under it. It might 
have helped me if I could have known what the nature of the trial 
was, and how long or how short a time elapsed before she sank un- 
der it. In that hope I spoke.” 

“ When you told me she was dangerously ill,” said Kirke, “ did 
you mean danger to her reason or to her life ?” 

“ To both,” replied Mr. Merrick. “ Her whole nervous system has 
given way ; all the ordinary functions of her brain are in a state of 
collapse. I can give you no plainer explanation than that of the na- 
ture of the malady. The fever which frightens the people of the 
house is merely the effect. The cause is what I have told you. 
She may lie on that bed for weeks to come ; passing alternately, 
without a gleam of consciousness, from a state of delirium to a state 
of repose. You must not be alarmed if you find her sleep lasting 
far beyond the natural time. That sleep is a better remedy than any 
I can give, and nothing must disturb it. All our art can accom- 
plish is to watch her, to help her with stimulants from time to time, 
and to wait for what Nature will do.” 

“ Must she remain here ? Is there no hope of our being able to 
remove her to a better place ?” 

u No hope whatever, for the present. She has already been dis- 
turbed, as I understand, and she is seriously the worse for it. Even 
if she gets better, even if she comes to herself again, it would still 
be a dangerous experiment to move her too soon — the least excite- 
ment or alarm would be fatal to her. You must make the best of 
this place as it is. The landlady has my directions ; and I will send 
a good nurse to help her. There is nothing more to be done. So 
far as her life can be said to be in any human hands, it is as much 
in your hands now as in mine. Every thing depends on the care 
that is taken of her, under your direction, in this house.” With 
those farewell words he rose and quitted the room. 

Left by himself, Kirke walked to the door of communication, 
and, knocking tit it softly, told the landlady he wished to speak 
with her. 


582 


NO NAME. 


He was far more composed, far more like his own resolute self, 
after his interview with the doctor, than he had been before it. A 
man living in the artificial social atmosphere which this man had 
never breathed would have felt painfully the worldly side of the 
situation — its novelty and strangeness ; the serious present difficulty 
in which it placed him ; the numberless misinterpretations in the 
future to which it might lead. Kirke never gave the situation a 
thought. He saw nothing but the duty it claimed from him — a 
duty which the doctor’s farewell words had put plainly before his 
mind. Every thing depended on the care taken of her, under his 
direction, in that house. There was his responsibility, and he un- 
consciously acted under it, exactly as he would have acted in a case 
of emergency with women and children on board his own ship. He 
questioned the landlady in short, sharp sentences : the only change 
in him was in the lowered tone of his voice, and in the anxious 
looks which he cast, from time to time, at the room where she lay. 

“ Do you understand what the doctor has told you ?” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ The house must be kept quiet. Who lives in the house ?” 

“ Only me and my daughter, sir ; we live in the parlors. Times 
have gone badly with us since Lady Day. Both the rooms above 
this are to let.” 

“ I will take them both, and the two rooms down here as well. 
Do you know of any active trustworthy man who can run on er- 
rands for me ?” 

“ Yes, sir. Shall I go— ?” 

“No ; let your daughter go. You must not leave the house until 
the nurse comes. Don’t send the messenger up here. Men of that 
sort tread heavily. I’ll go down, and speak to him at the door.” 

He went down when the messenger came, and sent him first to 
purchase pen, ink, and paper. The man’s next errand dispatched 
him to make inquiries for a person who could provide for deaden- 
ing the sound of passing wheels in the street by laying down tan 
before the house in the usual way. This object accomplished, the 
messenger received two letters to post. The first was addressed to 
Kirke’s brother-in-law. It told him, in few and plain words, what 
had happened ; and left him to break the news to his wife as he 
thought best. The second letter was directed to the landlord of 
the Aldborough Hotel. Magdalen’s assumed name at North Shin- 
gles was the only name by which Kirke knew her ; and the one 
chance of tracing her relatives that he could discern was the chance 
of discovering her reputed uncle and aunt by means of inquiries 
starting from Aldborough. 

Toward the close of the afternoon a decent middle-aged woman 
came to the house, with a letter from Mr. Merrick. She was well 


NO NAME. 


583 


known to the doctor as a trustworthy and careful person, who had 
nursed his own wife ; and she would be assisted, from time to time, 
by a lady who was a member of a religious Sisterhood in the dis- 
trict, and whose compassionate interest had been warmly aroused 
in the case. Toward eight o’clock that evening the doctor him- 
self would call and see that his patient wanted for nothing. 

The arrival of the nurse, and the relief of knowing that she was 
to be trusted, left Kirke free to think of himself. His luggage was 
ready packed for his contemplated journey to Suffolk the next day. 
It was merely necessary to transport it from the hotel to the house 
in Aaron’s Buildings. 

He stopped once only on his way to the hotel to look at a toy- 
shop in one of the great thoroughfares. The miniature ships in the 
window reminded him of his nephew. “ My little namesake will be 
sadly disappointed at not seeing me to-morrow,” he thought. “ I 
must make it up to the boy by sending him something from his un- 
cle.” He went into the shop and bought one of the ships. It was 
secured in a box, and packed and directed in his presence. He put 
a card on the deck of the miniature vessel before the cover of the 
box was nailed on, bearing this inscription : “A ship for the little 
sailor, with the big sailor’s love.” — “ Children like to be written to, 
ma’am,” he said, apologetically, to the woman behind the counter. 
“ Send the box as soon as you can — I am anxious the boy should 
get it to-morrow.” 

Toward the dusk of the evening he returned with his luggage to 
Aaron’s Buildings. He took off his boots in the passage, and car- 
ried his trunk up stairs himself ; stopping, as he passed the first 
floor, to make his inquiries. Mr. Merrick was present to answer 
them. 

“ She was awake and wandering,” said the doctor, “ a few min- 
utes since. But we have succeeded in composing her, and she is 
sleeping now.” 

“ Have no words escaped her, sir, which might help us to find her 
friends ?” 

Mr. Merrick shook his head. 

“Weeks and w T eeks may pass yet,” he said, “ and that poor girl’s 
story may still be a sealed secret to all of us. We can only wait.” 

So the day ended — the first of many days that were to come. 


* CHAPTER II. 

The warm sunlight of July shining softly through a green blind; 
an open window with fresh flowers set on the sill ; a strange bed, in 
a strange room ; a giant figure of the female sex (like a dream of Mrs, 


l 


584 


NO NAME. 


Wragge) towering aloft on one side of the bed, and trying to clap 
its hands ; another woman (quickly) stopping the hands before they 
could make any noise ; a mild expostulating voice (like a dream of 
Mrs. Wragge again) breaking the silence in these words, “ She knows 
me, ma’am, she knows me ; if I mustn’t be happy, it will be the death 
of me !” — such were the first sights, such were the first sounds, to 
which, after six weeks of oblivion, Magdalen suddenly and strange- 
ly awoke. 

After a little, the sights grew dim again, and the sounds sank into 
silence. Sleep, the merciful, took her once more, and hushed her 
back to repose. 

Another day — and the sights were clearer, the sounds were loud- 
er. Another — and she heard a man’s voice, through the door, ask- 
ing for news from the sick-room. The voice was strange to her ; it 
was always cautiously lowered to the same quiet tone. It inquired 
after her, in the morning, when she woke — at noon, when she took 
her refreshment — in the evening, before she dropped asleep again. 
“ Who is so anxious about me ?” That was the first thought her 
mind was strong enough to form — “ Who is so anxious about me ?” 

More days — and she could speak to the nurse at her bedside ; she 
could answer the questions of an elderly man, who knew far more 
about her than she knew about herself, and who told her he was 
Mr. Merrick, the doctor ; she could sit up in bed, supported by pil- 
lows, wondering what had happened to her, and where she was ; 
she could feel a growing curiosity about that quiet voice, which still 
asked after her, morning, noon, and night, on the other side of the 
door. 

Another day’s delay — and Mr. Merrick asked her if she was strong 
enough to see an old friend. A meek voice, behind him, articula- 
ting high in the air, said, “ It’s only me.” The voice was followed 
by the prodigious bodily apparition of Mrs. Wragge, with her cap 
all awry, and one of her shoes in the next room. “ Oh, look at her ! 
look at her!” cried Mrs. Wragge, in an ecstasy, dropping on her 
knees at Magdalen’s bedside, with a thump that shook the house. 
“ Bless her heart, she’s well enough to laugh at me already. ‘ Cheer, 
boys, cheer — !’ I beg your pardon, doctor, my conduct isn’t lady- 
like, I know. It’s my head, sir ; it isn’t me. I must give vent some- 
how, or my head w T ill burst !” No coherent sentence, in answer to 
any sort of question put to her, could be extracted that morning 
from Mrs. Wragge. She rose from one climax of verbal confusion 
to another — and finished her visit under the bed, groping inscruta- 
bly for the second shoe. 

The morrow came — and Mr. Merrick promised that she should see 
another old friend on the next day. In the evening, w T hen the in- 
quiring voice asked after her, as usual, and when the door was 


NO NAME. 


585 


opened a few inches to give the reply, she answered faintly for her- 
self: “I am better, thank you.” There was a moment' of silence — 
and then, just as the door was shut again, the voice sank to a whis- 
per, and said, fervently, “ Thank God !” Who was he ? She had 
asked them all, and no one would tell her. Who was he ? 

The next day came; and she heard her door opened softly. 
Brisk footsteps tripped into the room ; a lithe little figure advanced 
to the bedside. Was it a dream again ? No ! There he was in his 
own evergreen reality, with the copious flow of language pouring 
smoothly from his lips ; with the lambent dash of humor twinkling 
in his party-colored eyes — there he was, more audacious, more per- 
suasive, more respectable than ever, in a suit of glossy black, with a 
speckless white cravat, and a rampant shirt frill — the unblushing, 
the invincible, unchangeable Wragge ! 

“Not a word, my dear girl!” said the captain, seating himself 
comfortably at the bedside, in his old confidential way. “ I am to 
do all the talking ; and, I think you will own, a more competent 
man for the purpose could not possibly have been found. I am re- 
ally delighted — honestly delighted, if I may use such an apparently 
inappropriate word — to see you again, and to see you getting well. 
1 have often thought of you ; I have often missed you ; I have often 
said to myself— never mind what ! Clear the stage, and drop the 
curtain on the past. Dum mvimus , mvamus ! Pardon the pedantry 
of a Latin quotation, my dear, and tell me how I look. Am I, or 
am I not, the picture of a prosperous man ?” 

Magdalen attempted to answer him. The captain’s deluge of 
words flowed over her again in a moment. 

“ Don’t exert yourself,” he said. “ I’ll put all your questions for 
you. What have I been about? Why do I look so remarkably 
well off ? And how in the world did I find my way to this house ? 
My dear girl, I have been occupied, since we last saw each other, in 
slightly modifying my old professional habits. I have shifted from 
Moral Agriculture to Medical Agriculture. Formerly I preyed on 
the public sympathy, now I prey on the public stomach. Stom- 
ach and sympathy, sympathy and stomach — look them both fairly 
in the face when you reach the wrong side of fifty, and you will 
agree with me that they come to much the same thing. However 
that may be, here I am — incredible as it may appear — a man with 
an income, at last. The founders of my fortune are three in num- 
ber. Their names are Aloes, Scammony, and Gamboge. In plain- 
er words, I am now living — on a Pill. I made a little money (if 
you remember) by my friendly connection with you. I made a lit- 
tle more by the happy decease ( Pequiescat in Pace!) of that female 
relative of Mrs. Wragge’s from whom, as I told you, my wife had 
expectations. Very good. What do you think I did ? I invested 


586 


NO NAME. 


the whole of my capital, at one fell swoop, in advertisements, and 
purchased nfy drugs and my pill-boxes on credit. The result is 
now before you. Here I am, a Grand Financial Fact. Here I am, 
with my clothes positively paid for ; with a balance at my banker’s ; 
with my servant in livery, and my gig at the door ; solvent, flourish- 
ing, popular — and all on a Pill.” 

Magdalen smiled. The captain’s face assumed an expression of 
mock gravity ; he looked as if there was a serious side to the ques- 
tion, and as if he meant to put it next. 

“ It’s no laughing matter to the public, my dear,” he said. “ They 
can’t get rid of me and my Pill ; they must take us. There is not 
a single form of appeal in the whole range of human advertisement 
which I am not making to the unfortunate public at this moment. 
Hire the last new novel, there I am, inside the boards of the book. 
Send for the last new Song — the instant you open the leaves, I drop 
out of it. Take a cab — I fly in at the window in red. Buy a box of 
tooth-powder at the chemist’s — I wrap it up for you in blue. Show 
yourself at the theatre — I flutter down on you in yellow. The mere 
titles of my advertisements are quite irresistible. Let me quote a 
few from last week’s issue. Proverbial Title : ‘A Pill in time saves 
Nine.’ Familiar Title: ‘Excuse me, how is your Stomach?’ Pa- 
triotic Title: ‘What are the three characteristics of a true-born 
Englishman ? His Hearth, his Home, and his Pill. ’ Title in the 
form of a nursery dialogue : ‘ Mamma, I am not w T ell.’ ‘ What is 
the matter, my pet V ‘ I want a little Pill.’ Title in the form of a 
Historical Anecdote : ‘ New Discovery in the Mine of English His- 
tory. When the Princes were smothered in the Tower, their faith- 
ful attendant collected all their little possessions left behind them. 
Among the touching trifles dear to the poor boys, he found a tiny 
Box. It contained the Pill of the Period. Is it necessary to say 
how inferior that Pill was to its Successor, w 7 hich prince and peas- 
ant alike may now obtain ?’ — Et caetera, et caetera. The place in 
which my Pill is made is an advertisement in itself. I have got one 
of the largest shops in London. Behind one counter (visible to the 
public through the lucid medium of plate-glass) are four-and-twen- 
ty young men, in white aprons, making the Pill. Behind another 
counter are four-and-twenty young men, in white cravats, making 
the boxes. At the bottom of the shop are three elderly account- 
ants, posting the vast financial transactions accruing from the Pill 
in three enormous ledgers. Over the door are my name, portrait, 
and autograph, expanded to colossal proportions, and surrounded 
in flowing letters, by the motto of the establishment, ‘ Down with 
the Doctors !’ Even Mrs. Wragge contributes her quota to this 
prodigious enterprise. She is the celebrated woman whom I have 
cured of indescribable agonies from every complaint under the sun. 


NO NAME. 


587 


Her portrait is engraved on all the wrappers, with the following 
inscription beneath it : ‘ Before she took the Pill you might have 
blown this patient away with a feather. Look at her now ! ! !’ Last, 
not least, my dear girl, the Pill is the cause of my finding my way 
to this house. My department in the prodigious Enterprise already 
mentioned is to scour the United Kingdom in a gig, establishing 
Agencies everywhere. While founding one of those Agencies, I 
heard of a certain friend of mine, who had lately landed in En- 
gland, after a long sea-voyage. I got his address in London— he 
was a lodger in this house. I called on him forthwith, and was 
stunned by the news of your illness. Such, in brief, is the history 
of my existing connection with British Medicine ; and so it happens 
that you see me at the present moment sitting in the present chair, 
now as ever, yours truly, Horatio Wragge.” 

In these terms the captain brought his personal statement to a 
close. He looked more and more attentively at Magdalen, the 
nearer he got to the conclusion. Was there some latent impor- 
tance attaching to his last words which did not appear on the face 
of them ? There was. His visit to the sick-room had a serious ob- 
ject, and that object he had now approached. 

In describing the circumstances under which he had become 
acquainted with Magdalen’s present position, Captain Wragge had 
skirted, with his customary dexterity, round the remote boundaries 
of truth. Emboldened by the absence of any public scandal in 
connection with Noel Yanstone’s marriage, or with the event of his 
death as announced in the newspaper obituary, the captain, roam- 
ing the eastern circuit, had ventured back to Aldborough a fort- 
night since, to establish an agency there for the sale of his wonder- 
ful Pill. No one had recognized him but the landlady of the hotel, 
who at once insisted on his entering the house and reading Kirke’s 
letter to her husband. The same night Captain Wragge was in 
London, and was closeted with the sailor in the second-floor room 
at Aaron’s Buildings. 

The serious nature of the situation, the indisputable certainty that 
Kirke must fail in tracing Magdalen’s friends unless he first knew 
who she really was, had decided the captain on disclosing part, at 
least, of the truth. Declining to enter into any particulars — for fam- 
ily reasons, which Magdalen might explain on her recovery, if she 
pleased — he astounded Kirke by telling him that the friendless 
woman whom he had rescued, and whom he had only known up to 
that moment as Miss Bygrave — was no other than the youngest 
daughter of Andrew Yanstone. The disclosure, on Kirke’s side, of 
his father’s connection with the young officer in Canada, had fol- 
lowed naturally, on the revelation of Magdalen’s real n^me. Cap 


588 


NO NAME. 


tain Wragge had expressed his surprise, but had made no further 
remark at the time. A fortnight later, however, when the patient’s 
recovery forced the serious difficulty on the doctor of meeting the 
questions which Magdalen was sure to ask, the captain’s ingenuity 
had come, as usual, to the rescue. 

“ You can’t tell her the truth,” he said, “ without awakening pain- 
ful recollections of her stay at Aldborough, into which I am not at 
liberty to enter. Don’t acknowledge just yet that Mr. Kirke only 
knew her as Miss Bygrave of North Shingles when he found her in 
this house. Tell her boldly that he knew who she was, and that he 
felt (what she must feel) that he had a hereditary right to help and 
protect her as his father’s son. I am, as I have already told you,” 
continued the captain, sticking fast to his old assertion, “ a distant 
relative of the Combe-Raven family ; and, if there is nobody else at 
hand to help you through this difficulty, my services are freely at 
your disposal.” 

No one else was at hand, and the emergency was a serious one. 
Strangers undertaking the responsibility might ignorantly jar on 
past recollections, which it would, perhaps, be the death of her to 
revive too soon. Near relatives might, by their premature appear- 
ance at the bedside, produce the same deplorable result. The alter- 
native lay between irritating and alarming her by leaving her in- 
quiries unanswered, or trusting Captain Wragge. In the doctor’s 
opinion, the second risk was the least serious risk of the two — and 
the captain was now seated at Magdalen’s bedside in discharge of 
the trust confided to him. 

Would she ask the question which it had been the private object 
of all Captain Wragge’s preliminary talk lightly and pleasantly to 
provoke ? Yes ; as soon as his silence gave her the opportunity, she 
asked it : “ Who was that friend of his living in the house ?” 

“ You ought by rights to know him as well as I do,” said the cap- 
tain. “He is the son of one of your father’s old military friends, 
when your father was quartered with his regiment in Canada. 
Your cheeks mustn’t flush up ! If they do, I shall go away.” 

She was astonished, but not agitated. Captain Wragge had be- 
gun by interesting her in the remote past, which she only knew by 
hearsay, before he ventured on the delicate ground of her own expe- 
rience: 

In a moment more she advanced to her next question: “What 
was his name?” 

“ Kirke,” proceeded the captain. “ Did you never hear of his fa- 
ther, Major Kirke, commanding officer of the regiment in Canada ? 
Did you never hear that the major helped your father through a 
great difficulty, like the best of good fellows and good friends ?” 

Yes; she faintly fancied she had heard something about her fa- 


NO NAME. 


589 


ther and an officer who had once been very good to him wheirdie 
was a young man. But she could not look back so long. “ Was 
Mr. Kirke poor ?” 

Even Captain Wragge’s penetration was puzzled by that question. 
He gave the true answer at hazard. “ No,” he said, “ not poor.” 

Her next inquiry showed what she had been thinking of. “ If Mr. 
Kirke was not poor, why did he come to live in that house ?” 

“ She has caught me !” thought the captain. “ There is only one 
way out of it — I must administer another dose of truth. Mr. Kirke 
discovered you here by chance,” he proceeded aloud, “ very ill, and 
not nicely attended to. Somebody was wanted to take care of you 
while you were not able to take care of yourself. Why not Mr. 
Kirke ? He was the son of your father’s old friend — which is the 
next thing to being your old friend. Who had a better claim to 
send for the right doctor, and get the right nurse, when I was not 
here to cure you with my wonderful Pill ? Gently ! gently ! you 
mustn’t take hold of my superfine black coat-sleeve in that uncere- 
monious manner.” 

He put her hand back on the bed, but she was not to be checked 
in that way. She persisted in asking another question. “ How came 
Mr. Kirke to know her ? She had never seen him ; she had never 
heard of him in her life.” 

‘‘Very likely,” said Captain Wragge. “ But your never having 
seen Mm is no reason why he should not have seen you .” 

“ When did he see me ?” 

The captain corked up his doses of truth on the spot without a 
moment’s hesitation. 

“ Some time ago, my dear. I can’t exactly say when.” 

“ Only once ?” 

Captain Wragge suddenly saw his way to the administration of 
another dose. “ Yes,” he said, “ only once.” 

She reflected a little. The next question involved the simultane- 
ous expression of two ideas, and the next question cost her an effort. 

“ He only saw me once,” she said, “ and he only saw me some 
time ago. How came he to remember me when he found me here ?” 

“Aha!” said the captain. “Now you have hit the right nail on 
the head at last. You can’t possibly be more surprised at his re- 
membering you than I am. A word of advice, my dear. When 
you are well enough to get up and see Mr. Kirke, try how that sharp 
question of yours sounds in Ms ears, and insist on his answering it 
himself.” Slipping out of the dilemma in that characteristically 
adroit manner, Captain Wragge got briskly on his legs again and 
took up his hat. 

“ Wait !” she pleaded. “ I want to ask you — ” 

“ Not another word,” said the captain. “ I have given you quite 


590 


NO NAME. 


enough to think of for one day. My time is up, and my gig is wait 
ing for me. I am off, to scour the country as usual. I am off, to 
cultivate the field of public indigestion with the triple plowshare 
of aloes, scammony, and gamboge.” He stopped and turned round 
at the door. u By-the-bye, a message from my unfortunate wife. 
If you will allow her to come and see you again, Mrs. Wragge sol- 
emnly promises not to lose her shoe next time. I don’t believe her. 
What do you say ? May she come ?” 

“Yes; whenever she likes,” said Magdalen. “If I ever get well 
again, may poor Mrs. Wragge come and stay with me ?” 

“ Certainly, my dear. If you have no objection, I will provide her 
beforehand with a few thousand impressions in red, blue, and yellow 
of her own portrait (‘You might have blown this patient away with 
a feather before she took the Pill. Look at her now !’). She is sure 
to drop herself about perpetually wherever she goes, and the most 
gratifying results, in an ad\ ertising point of view, must inevitably 
follow. Don’t think me mercenary — I merely understand the age 
I live in.” He stopped on his way out, for the second time, and 
turned round once more at the door. “You have been a remark- 
ably good girl,” he said, “ and you deserve to be rewarded for it. 
I’ll give you a last piece of information before I go. Have you 
heard any body inquiring after you, for the last day or two, outside 
your door ? Ah ! I see you have. A word in your ear, my dear. 
That’s Mr. Kirke.” He tripped away from the bedside as briskly 
as ever. Magdalen heard him advertising himself to the nurse be- 
fore he closed the door. “ If you are ever asked about it,” he said, 
in a confidential whisper, “ the name is Wragge, and the Pill is to 
be had in neat boxes, price thirteen pence half-penny, government 
stamp included. Take a few copies of the portrait of a female pa- 
tient, whom you might have blown away with a feather before she 
took the Pill, and whom you are simply requested to contemplate 
now. Many thanks. G^tfcZ-morning.” 

The door closed, and Magdalen was alone again. She felt no 
sense of solitude ; Captain Wragge had left her with something new 
to think of. Hour after hour her mind dwelt wonderingly on Mr. 
Kirke, until the evening came, and she heard his voice again through 
the half-opened door. 

“ I am very grateful,” she said to him, before the nurse could an- 
swer his inquiries — “ very, very grateful for all your goodness to me.” 

“ Try to get well,” he replied, kindly. “You will more than re- 
ward me, if you try to get well.” 

The next morning Mr. Merrick found her impatient to leave hei 
bed, and be moved to the sofa in the front room. The doctor said 
he supposed she wanted a change. “ Yes,” she replied ; “ I want 


NO NAME. 


591 


to see Mr. Kirke.” The doctor consented to move her on the next 
day, but he positively forbade the additional excitement of seeing 
any body until the day after. She attempted a remonstrance— Mr. 
Merrick was impenetrable. She tried, when he was gone, to win 
the nurse by persuasion— the nurse was impenetrable too. 

On the next day they wrapped her in shawls, and carried her in 
to the sofa, and made her a little bed on it. On the table near at 
hand were some flowers and a number of an illustrated newspaper. 
She immediately asked who had put them there. The nurse (fail- 
ing to notice a warning look from the doctor) said Mr. Kirke had 
thought that she might like the flowers, and that the pictures in the 
paper might amuse her. After that reply, her anxiety to see Mr. 
Kirke became too ungovernable to be trifled with. The doctor left 
the room at once to fetch him. 

She looked eagerly at the opening door. Her first glance at him 
as he came in raised a doubt in her mind whether she now saw that 
tall figure and that open sun-burned face for the first time. But 
she was too weak and too agitated to follow her recollections as far 
back as Aid borough. She resigned the attempt, and only looked 
at him. He stopped at the foot of the sofa, and said a few cheering 
words. She beckoned to him to come nearer, and offered him her 
wasted hand. He tenderly took it in his, and sat down by her. 
They were both silent. His face told her of the sorrow and the 
sympathy which his silence would fain have concealed. She still 
held his hand — consciously now — as persistently as she had held it 
on the day when he found her. Her eyes closed, after a vain effort to 
speak to him, and the tears rolled slowly over her wan white cheeks. 

The doctor signed to Kirke to wait and give her time. She re- 
covered a little and looked at him. “ How kind you have been to 
me !” she murmured. “ And how little I have deserved it !” 

“Hush! hush!” he said. “You don’t know what a happiness it 
was to me to help you.” 

The sound of his voice seemed to strengthen her, and to give her 
courage. She lay looking at him with an eager interest, with a 
gratitude which artlessly ignored all the conventional restraints that 
interpose between a woman and a man. “ Where did you see me,” 
she said, suddenly, “ before you found me here ?” 

Kirke hesitated. Mr. Merrick came to his assistance. 

“ I forbid you to say a word about the past to Mr. Kirke,” inter- 
posed the doctor ; “ and I forbid Mr. Kirke to say a word about it 
to you. You are beginning a new life to-day, and the only recol- 
lections I sanction are recollections five minutes old.” 

She looked at the doctor and smiled. “ I must ask him one ques- 
tion,” she said, and turned back again to Kirke. “Is it true that 
you had only seen me once before you came to this house ?” 


592 


NO NAMlS. 


“ Quite true !” He made the reply with a sudden Ohaiige of coloi 
which she instantly detected. Her brightening eyes looked at him 
more earnestly than ever, as she put her next question. 

“ How came you to remember me, after only seeing me once ?” 

His hand unconsciously closed on hers, and pressed it for the first 
time. He attempted to answer, and hesitated at the first word. “ I 
have a good memory,” he said at last ; and suddenly looked away 
from her with a confusion so strangely unlike his customary self-pos- 
session of manner that the doctor and the nurse both noticed it. 

Every nerve in her body felt that momentary pressure of his hand, 
with the exquisite susceptibility which accompanies the first falter- 
ing advance on the way to health. She looked at his changing 
color, she listened to his hesitating words, with every sensitive per- 
ception of her sex and age quickened to seize intuitively on the 
truth. In the moment when he looked away from her, she gently 
took her hand from him, and turned her head aside on the pillow. 
“Can it be?” she thought, with a flutter of delicious fear at her 
heart, with a glow of delicious confusion burning on her cheeks. 
u Can it be ?” 

The doctor made another sign to Kirke. He understood it, and 
rose immediately. The momentary discomposure in his face and 
manner had both disappeared. He was satisfied in his own mind 
that he had successfully kept his secret, and in the relief of feeling 
that conviction he had become himself again. 

“ Good-bye till to-morrow,” he said, as he left the room. 

“ Good-bye,” she answered, softly, without looking at him. 

Mr. Merrick took the chair which Kirke had resigned, and laid 
his hand on her pulse. “Just what I feared,” remarked the doctor; 
“ too quick by half.” 

She petulantly snatched away her wrist. “ Don’t !” she said, 
shrinking from him. “ Pray don’t touch me !” 

Mr. Merrick good-humoredly gave up his place to the nurse. u I’ll 
return in half an hour,” he whispered, “ and carry her back to bed. 
Don’t let her talk. Show her the pictures in the newspaper, and 
keep her quiet in that way.” 

When the doctor returned, the nurse reported that the newspaper 
had not been wanted. The patient’s conduct had been exemplary. 
She had not been at all restless, and she had never spoken a word. 

The days passed, and the time grew longer and longer which the 
doctor allowed her to spend in the front room. She was soon able 
to dispense with the bed on the sofa — she could be dressed, and 
could sit up, supported by pillows, in an arm-chair. Her hours of 
emancipation from the bedroom represented the great daily event 
of her life. They were the hours she passed in Kirke’s society. 


NO NAME. 


503 


She had a double interest in him now — her interest in the man 
whose protecting care had saved her reason and her life ; her inter- 
est in the man whose heart’s dearest and deepest secret she had sur- 
prised. Little by little they grew as easy and familiar with each 
other as old friends ; little by little she presumed on all her priv- 
ileges, and wound her way unsuspected into the most intimate 
knowledge of his nature. 

Her questions were endless. Every thing that he could tell her 
of himself and his life she drew from him delicately and insensibly : 
he, the least self-conscious of mankind, became an egotist in her 
dexterous hands. She found out his pride in his ship, and practiced 
on it without remorse. She drew him into talking of the fine quali- 
ties of the vessel, of the great things the vessel had done in emer- 
gencies, as he had never in his life talked yet to any living creature 
on shore. She found him out in private sea-faring anxieties and 
unutterable sea-faring exultations which he had kept a secret from 
his own mate. She watched his kindling face with a delicious sense 
of triumph in adding fuel to the fire ; she trapped him into forget- 
ting all considerations of time and place, and striking as hearty a 
stroke on the rickety little lodging-house table, in the fervor of his 
talk, as if his hand had descended on the solid bulwark of his ship. 
His confusion at the discovery of his own forgetfulness secretly de- 
lighted her ; she could have cried with pleasure when he penitently 
wondered what he could possibly have been thinking of. 

At other times she drew him from dwelling on the pleasures of his 
life, and led him into talking of its perils — the perils of that jealous 
mistress the sea, which had absorbed so much of his existence, which 
had kept him so strangely innocent and ignorant of the world on 
shore. Twice he had been shipwrecked. Times innumerable he 
and all with him had been threatened with death, and had escaped 
their doom by the narrowness of a hair-breadth. He was always 
unwilling at the outset to speak of this dark and dreadful side of 
his life : it was only by adroitly tempting him, by laying little snares 
for him in his talk, that she lured him into telling her of the terrors 
of the great deep. She sat listening to him with a breathless inter- 
est, looking at him with a breathless wonder, as those fearful stories 
— made doubly vivid by the simple language in which he told them 
— fell, one by one, from his lips. His noble unconsciousness of his 
own heroism — the artless modesty with which he described his own 
acts of dauntless endurance and devoted courage, without an idea 
that they were any thing more than plain acts of duty to which he 
was bound by the vocation that he followed — raised him to a place 
in her estimation so hopelessly high above her that she became un- 
easy and impatient until she had pulled down the idol again which 
she herself had set up. It was on these occasions that she most rig- 


594 


NO NAME. 


idly exacted from "him all those little familiar attentions so precious 
to women in their intercourse with men. “ This hand,” she thought, 
with an exquisite delight in secretly following the idea while he 
was close to her — “ this hand that has rescued the drowning from 
death is shifting my pillows so tenderly that I hardly know when 
they are moved. This hand that has seized men mad with mutiny, 
and driven them back to their duty by main force, is mixing my 
lemonade and peeling my fruit more delicately and more neatly than 
I could do it for myself. Oh, if I could be a man, how I should like 
to be such a man as this !” 

She never allowed her thoughts, while she was in his presence, to 
lead her beyond that point. It was only when the night had sepa- 
rated them that she ventured to let her mind dwell on the self-sac- 
rificing devotion which had so mercifully rescued her. Kirke little 
knew how she thought of him, in the secrecy of her own chamber, 
during the quiet hours that elapsed before she sank to sleep. No 
suspicion crossed his mind of the influence which he was exerting 
over her — of the new spirit which he was breathing into that new 
life, so sensitively open to impression in the first freshness of its re- 
covered sense. u She has nobody else to amuse her, poor thing,” 
he used to think, sadly, sitting alone in his small second-floor room. 
“If a rough fellow like me can beguile the weary hours till her 
friends come here, she is heartily welcome to all that I can tell her.” 

He was out of spirits and restless now whenever he was by him- 
self. Little by little he fell into a habit of taking long, lonely walks 
at night, when Magdalen thought he was sleeping up stairs. Once 
he went away abruptly in the day-time — on business, as he said. 
Something had passed between Magdalen and himself the evening 
before which had led her into telling him her age. “Twenty last 
birthday,” he thought. “ Take twenty from forty-one. An easy 
sum in subtraction — as easy a sum as my little nephew could wish 
for.” He walked to the Docks, and looked bitterly at the shipping. 
“ I mustn’t forget how a ship is made,” he said. “ It won’t be long 
before I am back at the old work again.” On leaving the Docks 
he paid a visit to a brother sailor — a married man. In the course 
of conversation he asked how much older his friend might be than 
his friend’s wife. There was six years’ difference between them. 
“I suppose that’s difference enough?” said Kirke. “Yes,” said his 
friend; “quite enough. Are you looking out for a wife at last? 
Try a seasoned woman of thirty-five — that’s your mark, Kirke, as 
near as I can calculate.” 

The time passed smoothly and quickly — the present time, in 
which she was recovering so happily — the present time, which he 
was beginning to distrust already. 


NO NAME. 


595 


Early one morning Mr. Merrick surprised Kirke by a visit in his 
little room on the second floor. 

“ I came to the conclusion yesterday,” said the doctor, entering 
abruptly on his business, “that our patient was strong enough to 
justify us at last in running all risks, and communicating with her 
friends; and I have accordingly followed the clue which that queer 
fellow, Captain Wragge, put into our hands. You remember he 
advised us to apply to Mr. Pendril, the lawyer ? I saw Mr. Pendril 
two days ago, and was referred by him — not over willingly, as I 
thought — to a lady named Miss Garth. I heard enough from her 
to satisfy me that we have exercised a wise caution in acting as we 
have done. It is a very, very sad story ; and I am bound to say 
that I, for one, make great allowances for the poor girl down stairs. 
Her only relation in the world is her elder sister. I have suggested 
that the sister shall write to her in the first instance, and then, if 
the letter does her no harm, follow it personally in a day or two. I 
have not given the address, by way of preventing any visits from 
being paid here without my permission. All I have done is to un- 
dertake to forward the letter, and I shall probably find it at my 
house when I get back. Can you stop at home until I send my 
man with it? There is not the least hope of my being able to 
bring it myself. All you need do is to watch for an opportunity 
when she is not in the front room, and to put the letter where she 
can see it when she comes in. The handwriting on the address 
will break the news before she opens the letter. Say nothing to her 
about it — take care that the landlady is within call — and leave her 
to herself. I know I can trust you to follow my directions, and that 
is why I ask you to do us this service. You look out of spirits this 
morning. Natural enough. You’re used to plenty of fresh air, cap- 
tain, and you’re beginning to pine in this close place.” 

“ May I ask a question, doctor ? Is she pining in this close place, 
too ? When her sister comes, will her sister take her away ?” 

“ Decidedly, if my advice is followed. She will be well enough 
to be moved in a week or less. Good-day. You are certainly out 
of spirits, and your hand feels feverish. Pining for the blue water, 
captain — pining for the blue water !” With that expression of opin- 
ion, the doctor cheerfully went out. 

In an hour the letter arrived. Kirke took it from the landlady 
reluctantly, and almost roughly, without looking at it. Having as- 
certained that Magdalen was still engaged at her toilet, and having 
explained to the landlady the necessity of remaining within call, he 
went down stairs immediately, and put the letter on the table in the 
front room. 

Magdalen heard the sound of the familiar step on the floor. “ I 
shall soon be ready,” she called to him, through the door. 


596 


NO NAME. 


He made no reply; he took his hat, and went out. After a mo- 
mentary hesitation, he turned his face eastward, and called on the 
ship-owners who employed him, at their office in Cornhill. 


CHAPTER HI. 

Magdalen’s first glance round the empty room showed her the 
letter on the table. The address, as the doctor had predicted, broke 
the news the moment she looked at it. 

Not a word escaped her. She sat down by the table, pale and si- 
lent, with the letter in her lap. Twice she attempted to open it, 
and twice she put it back again. The by-gone time was not alone 
in her mind as she looked at her sister’s handwriting : the fear of 
Kirke was there with it. “ My past life !” she thought. “ What 
will he think of me when he knows my past life ?” 

She made another effort, and broke the seal. A second letter 
dropped out of the inclosure, addressed to her in a handwriting with 
which she was not familiar. She put the second letter aside, and 
read the lines which Norah had written : 

“Ventnor, Isle of Wight, August 24th. 

“ My dearest Magdalen, — When you read this letter, try to 
think we have only been parted since yesterday ; and dismiss from 
your mind (as I have dismissed from mine) the past and all that be- 
longs to it. 

“ I am strictly forbidden to agitate you, or to weary you by writ- 
ing a long letter. Is it wrong to tell you that I am the happiest 
woman living ? I hope not, for I can’t keep the secret to myself. 

“ My darling, prepare yourself for the greatest surprise I have ever 
caused you. I am married. It is only a week to-day since I parted 
with my old name — it is only a week since I have been the happy 
wife of George Bartram, of St. Crux. 

“ There were difficulties at first in the way of our marriage, some 
of them, I am afraid, of my making. Happily for me, my husband 
knew from the beginning that I really loved him : he gave me a 
second chance of telling him so, after I had lost the first, and, as you 
see, I was wise enough to take it. You ought to be especially in- 
terested, my love, in this marriage, for you are the cause of it. If I 
had not gone to Aldborough to search for the lost trace of you — if 
George had not been brought there at the same time by circum- 
stances in which you were concerned, my husband and I might 
never have met. When we look back to our first impressions of 
each other, we look back to you. 


NO NAME. 


597 


“ I must keep my promise not to weary you ; I must bring this 
letter (sorely against my will) to an end. Patience ! patience I I 
shall see you soon. George and I are both coming to London to 
take you back with us to Yentnor. This is my husband’s invitation, 
mind, as well as mine. Don’t suppose I married him, Magdalen, un- 
til I had taught him to think of you as I think — to wish with my 
wishes, and to hope with my hopes. I could say so much more 
about this, so much more about George, if I might only give my 
thoughts and my pen their own way. But I must leave Miss Garth 
(at her own special request) a blank space to fill up on the last page 
of this letter; and I must only add one word more before I say 
good-bye — a word to warn you that I have another surprise in store, 
which I am keeping in reserve until we meet. Don’t attempt to 
guess what it is. You might guess for ages, and be no nearer than 
you are now to a discovery of the truth. 

u Your affectionate sister, Nor ah Bartram.” 

( Added by Miss Garth.) 

il My dear Child, — If I had ever lost my old loving recollection 
of you, I should feel it in my heart again now, when I know that it 
has pleased God to restore you to us from the brink of the grave. I 
add these lines to your sister’s letter because I am not sure that you 
are quite so fit yet, as she thinks you, to accept her proposal. She 
has not said a word of her husband or herself which is not true. 
But Mr. Bartram is a stranger to you ; and if you think you can re- 
cover more easily and more pleasantly to yourself under the wing 
of your old governess than under the protection of your new broth- 
er-in-law, come to me first, and trust to my reconciling Norah to the 
change of plans. I have secured the refusal of a little cottage at 
Shanklin, near enough to your sister to allow of your seeing each 
other whenever you like, and far enough away, at the same time, to 
secure you the privilege, when you wish it, of being alone. Send 
me one line before we meet to say Yes or No, and I will write to 
Shanklin by the next post. 

“ Always yours affectionately, Harriet Garth.” 

The letter dropped from Magdalen’s hand. Thoughts which had 
never risen in her mind yet rose in it now. 

Norah, whose courage under undeserved calamity had been the 
courage of resignation — Norah, who had patiently accepted her hard 
lot ; who from first to last had meditated no vengeance and stooped 
to no deceit — Norah had reached the end which all her sister’s in- 
genuity, all her sister’s resolution, and all her sister’s daring had 
failed to achieve. Openly and honorably, with love on one side 
and love on the other, Norah had married the man who possessed 


598 


NO NAME. 


the Combe-Raven money — and Magdalen’s own scheme to recover 
it had opened the way to the event which had brought husband 
and wife together. 

As the light of that overwhelming discovery broke on her mind, 
the old strife was renewed ; and Good and Evil struggled once more 
which should win her — but with added forces this time ; with the 
new spirit that had been breathed into her new life ; with the nobler 
sense that had grown with the growth of her gratitude to the man 
who had saved her, fighting on the better side. All the higher im- 
pulses of her nature, which had never, from first to last, let her err 
with impunity — which had tortured her, before her marriage and 
after it, with the remorse that no woman inherently heartless and 
inherently wicked can feel — all the nobler elements in her character, 
gathered their forces for the crowning struggle, and strengthened 
her to meet, with no unworthy shrinking, the revelation that had 
opened on her view. Clearer and clearer, in the light of its own 
immortal life, the truth rose before her from the ashes of her dead 
passions, from the grave of her buried hopes. When she looked at 
the letter again — when she read the words once more which told 
her that the recovery of the lost fortune was her sister’s triumph, 
not hers, she had victoriously trampled down all little jealousies and 
all mean regrets ; she could say in her heart of hearts, “ Norah has 
deserved it !” 

The day wore on. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and 
heedless of the second letter which she had not opened yet, until 
Kirke’s return. 

He stopped on the landing outside, and, opening the door a little 
way only, asked, without entering the room, if she wanted any thing 
that he could send her. She begged him to come in. His face was 
worn and weary ; he looked older than she had seen him look yet. 
“ Did you put my letter on the table for me ?” she asked. 

“ Yes. I put it there at the doctor’s request.” 

“ I suppose the doctor told you it was from my sister ? She is 
coming to see me, and Miss Garth is coming to see me. They will 
thank you for all your goodness to me better than I can.” 

“ I have no claim on their thanks,” he answered, sternly. “ What 
I have done was not done for them, but for you.” He waited a lit- 
tle, and looked at her. His face would have betrayed him in that 
look, his voice would have betrayed him in the next words he 
spoke, if she had not guessed the truth already. “When your 
friends come here,” he resumed, “ they will take you away, I sup- 
pose, to some better place than this.” 

“ They can take me to no place,” she said, gently, “ which I shall 
think of as I think of the place where you found me. They can 
take me to no dearer friend than the friend who has saved my life.” 


NO NAME. 


599 


There was a moment’s silence between them. 

“ We have been very happy here,” he went on, in lower and lower 
tones. “ You won’t forget me when we have said good-bye ?” 

She turned pale as the words passed his lips, and, leaving her 
chair, knelt down at the table, so as to look up into his face, and to 
force him to look into hers. 

“ Why do you talk of it?” she asked. “ We are not going to say 
good-bye, at least not yet.” 

“ I thought — ” he began. 

“Yes ?” 

“ I thought your friends were coming here — ” 

She eagerly interrupted him. “Do you think I would go away 
with any body,” she said, “ even with the dearest relation I have in 
the world, and leave you here, not knowing and not caring whether 
I ever saw you again ? Oh, you don’t think that of me !” she ex- 
claimed, with the passionate tears springing into her eyes — “ I’m sure 
you don’t think that of me !” 

“ No,” he said ; “ I never have thought, I never can think, unjust- 
ly or unworthily of you.” 

Before he could add another word she left the table as suddenly 
as she had approached it, and returned to her chair. He had un- 
consciously replied in terms that reminded her of the hard necessity 
which still remained unfulfilled — the necessity of telling him the 
story of the past. Not an idea of concealing that story from his 
knowledge crossed her mind. “ Will he love me, when he knows 
the truth, as he loves me now ?” That was her only thought as 
she tried to approach the subject in his presence without shrinking 
from it. 

“Let us put my own feelings out of the question,” she said. 
“ There is a reason for my not going away, unless I first have the as- 
surance of seeing you again. You have a claim — the strongest claim 
of any one — to know how I came here, unknown to my friends, and 
how it was that you found me fallen so low.” 

“ I make no claim,” he said, hastily. “ I wish to know nothing 
which it distresses you to tell me.” 

“ You have always done your duty,” she rejoined, with a faint 
smile. “ Let me take example from you, if I can, and try to do 
mine.” 

“ I am old enough to be your father,” he said, bitterly. “ Duty 
is more easily done at my age than it is at yours.” 

His age was so constantly in his mind now that he fancied it 
must be in her mind too. She had never given it a thought. The 
reference he had just made to it did not divert her for a moment 
from the subject on which she was speaking to him. 

“ You don’t know how I value your good opinion of me,” she 


600 


NO NAME. 


said, struggling resolutely to sustain her sinking courage. “ How 
can I deserve your kindness, how can I feel that I am worthy of 
your regard, until I have opened my heart to you ? Oh, don’t en- 
courage me in my own miserable weakness ! Help me to tell the 
truth— -force me to tell it, for my own sake if not for yours !” 

He was deeply moved by the fervent sincerity of that appeal. 

“ You shall tell it,” he said. “ You are right — and I was wrong.” 
He waited a little, and considered. “Would it be easier to you,” 
he asked, with delicate consideration for her, “ to write it than to 
tell it ?” 

She caught gratefully at the suggestion. “ Far easier,” she re- 
plied. “ I can be sure of myself— I can be sure of hiding nothing 
from you, if I write it. Don’t write to me on your side !” she add- 
ed, suddenly, seeing with a woman’s instinctive quickness of pene- 
tration the danger of totally renouncing her personal influence over 
him. “Wait till we meet, and tell me with your own lips what you 
think.” 

“ Where shall I tell it ?” 

“ Here !” she said, eagerly. “ Here, where you found me helpless 
— here, where you have brought me back to life, and where I have 
first learned to know you. I can bear the hardest words you say to 
me, if you will only say them in this room. It is impossible I can be 
away longer than a month ; a month will be enough, and more than 
enough. If I come back — ” She stopped confusedly. “ I am think- 
ing of myself,” she said, “ when I ought to be thinking of you. You 
have your own occupations and your own friends. Will you decide 
for us ? Will you say how it shall be ?” 

“ It shall be as you wish. If you come back in a month, you will 
find me here.” 

“ Will it cause you no sacrifice of your own comfort and your own 
plans ?” 

“ It will cause me nothing,” he replied, “ but a journey back to 
the City.” He rose and took his hat. “ I must go there at once,” 
he added, “ or I shall not be in time.” 

“ It is a promise between us ?” she said, and held out her hand. 

“Yes,” he answered, a little sadly ; “it is a promise.” 

Slight as it was, the shade of melancholy in his manner pained 
her. Forgetting all other anxieties in the anxiety to cheer him, she 
gently pressed the hand he gave her. “ If that won’t tell him the 
truth,” she thought, “ nothing will.” 

It failed to tell him the truth ; but it forced a question on his 
mind which he had not ventured to ask himself before. “ Is it her 
gratitude, or her love, that is speaking to me ?” he wondered. “ If 
I was only a younger man, I might almost hope it was her love.” 
That terrible sum in subtraction which had first presented itself on 


NO NAME. 


601 


the day when she told him her age began to trouble him again as 
he left the house. He took twenty from forty-one at intervals, all 
the way back to the ship-owners’ office in Cornhill. 

Left by herself, Magdalen approached the table to write the line 
of answer which Miss Garth requested, and gratefully to accept the 
proposal that had been made to her. 

The second letter which she had laid aside and forgotten was 
the first object that caught her eye on changing her place. She 
opened it immediately, and, not recognizing the handwriting, look- 
ed at the signature. To her unutterable astonishment, her corre- 
spondent proved to be no less a person than — old Mr. Clare ! 

The philosopher’s letter dispensed with all the ordinary forms of 
address, and entered on the subject without prefatory phrases of 
any kind, in these uncompromising terms : 

“ I have more news for you of that contemptible cur, my son. 
Here it is in the fewest possible words. 

“ I always told you, if you remember, that Frank was a Sneak. 
The very first trace recovered of him, after his running away from 
his employers in China, presents him in that character. Where do 
you think he turns up next ? He turns up, hidden behind a couple 
of flour barrels, on board an English vessel bound homeward from 
Hong-Kong to London. 

“ The n^me of the ship was the Deliverance , and the commander 
was one Captain Kirke. Instead of acting like a sensible man, 
and throwing Frank overboard, Captain Kirke was fool enough to 
listen to his story. He made the most of his misfortunes, you may 
be sure. He was half starved ; he was an Englishman lost in a 
strange country, without a friend to help him ; his only chance of 
getting home was to sneak into the hold of an English vessel — and 
he had sneaked in, accordingly, at Hong-Kong, two days since. 
That was his story. Any other lout in Frank’s situation would 
have been rope’s-ended by any other captain. Deserving no pity 
from any body, Frank was, as a matter of course, coddled and com- 
passionated on the spot. The captain took him by the hand, the 
crew pitied him, and the passengers patted him on the back. He 
was fed, clothed, and presented with his passage home. Luck 
enough so far, you will say. Nothing of the sort ; nothing like 
luck enough for my despicable son. 

“ The ship touched at the Cape of Good Hope. Among his other 
acts of folly Captain Kirke took a woman passenger on board at 
that place — not a young woman by any means — the elderly widow 
of a rich colonist. Is it necessary to say that she forthwith became 
deeply interested in Frank and his misfortunes ? Is it necessary 


602 


NO NAME. 


to tell you what followed ? Look back at my son’s career, and you 
will see that what followed was all of a piece with what went be- 
fore. He didn’t deserve your poor father’s interest in him — and he 
got it. He didn’t deserve your attachment — and he got it. He 
didn’t deserve the best place in one of the best offices in London ; 
he didn’t deserve an equally good chance in one of the best mer- 
cantile houses in China ; he didn’t deserve food, clothing, pity, and 
a free passage home — and he got them all. Last, not least, he didn’t 
even deserve to marry a woman old enough to be his grandmother 
— and he has done it ! Not five minutes since I sent his wedding- 
cards out to the dust-hole, and tossed the letter that came with 
them into the fire. The last piece of information which that letter 
contains is that he and his wife are looking out for a house and es- 
tate to suit them. Mark my words ! Frank will get one of the 
best estates in England ; a seat in the House of Commons will fol- 
low as a matter of course ; and one of the legislators of this Ass-rid- 
den country will be — My Lout ! 

“ If you are the sensible girl I have always taken you for, you 
have long since learned to rate Frank at his true value, and the 
news I send you will only confirm your contempt for him. I wish 
your poor father could but have lived to see this day ! Often as I 
have missed my old gossip, I don’t know that I ever felt the loss of 
him so keenly as I felt it when Frank’s wedding-cards and Frank’s 
letter came to this house. Your friend, if you ever want one, 

“ Francis Clare, Sen.” 

With one momentary disturbance of her composure, produced by 
the appearance of Kirke’s name in Mr. Clare’s singular narrative, 
Magdalen read the letter steadily through from beginning to end. 
The time when it could have distressed her was gone by ; the scales 
had long since fallen from her eyes. Mr. Clare himself would have 
been satisfied if he had seen the quiet contempt on her face as she 
laid aside his letter. The only serious thought it cost her was a 
thought in which Kirke was concerned. The careless manner in 
which he had referred in her presence to the passengers on board 
his ship, without mentioning any of them by their names, showed 
her that Frank must have kept silence on the subject of the engage- 
ment once existing between them. The confession of that vanished 
delusion was left for her to make, as part of the story of the past 
which she had pledged herself unreservedly to reveal. 

She wrote to Miss Garth, and sent the letter to the post im- 
mediately. 

The next morning brought a line of rejoinder. Miss Garth had 
written to secure the cottage at Shanklin, and Mr. Merrick had con- 
sented to Magdalen’s removal on the following day. Norah would 


NO NAME. 


603 


be the first to arrive at the house ; and Miss Garth would follow, 
with a comfortable carriage to take the invalid to the railway. 
Every needful arrangement had been made for her; the effort of 
moving was the one effort she would have to make. 

Magdalen read the letter thankfully, but her thoughts wandered 
from it, and followed Kirke on his return to the City. What was 
the business which had once already taken him there in the morn- 
ing ? And why had the promise exchanged between them obliged 
him to go to the City again, for the second time in one day ? 

Was it by any chance business relating to the sea? Were his 
employers tempting him to go back to his ship ? 


CHAPTER IV. 

The first agitation of the meeting between the sisters was over; 
the first vivid impressions, half pleasurable, half painful, had soften- 
ed a little, and Norah and Magdalen sat together hand in hand, 
each rapt in the silent fullness of her own joy. 

Magdalen was the first to speak. 

“ You have something to tell me, Norah ?” 

“ I have a thousand things to tell you, my love ; and you have 
ten thousand things to tell me. — Do you mean that second surprise 
which I told you of in my letter ?” 

“ Yes. I suppose it must concern me very nearly, or you would 
hardly have thought of mentioning it in your first letter ?” 

“ It does concern you very nearly. You have heard of George’s 
house in Essex ? You must be familiar, at least, with the name ot 
St. Crux ?— What is there to start at, my dear ? I am afraid you are 
hardly strong enough for any more surprises just yet ?” 

“ Quite strong enough, Norah. I have something to say to you 
about St. Crux — I have a surprise, on my side, for you” 

“ Will you tell it me now ?” 

“ Not now. You shall know it when we are at the sea-side ; you 
shall know it before I accept the kindness which has invited me to 
your husband’s house.” 

“ What can it be ? Why not tell me at once ?” 

“ You used often to set me the example of patience, Norah, in old 
times ; will you set me the example now ?” 

u With all my heart. Shall I return to my own story as well? 
Yes ? Then we will go back to it at once. I was telling you that 
St. Crux is George’s house, in Essex, the house he inherited from 
his uncle. Knowing that Miss Garth had a curiosity to see the 
place, he left word (when he went abroad after the admiral’s death) 


604 


NO NAME. 


that she and any friends who came with her were to be admitted, 
if she happened to find herself in the neighborhood during his ab- 
sence. Miss Garth and I, and a large party of Mr. Tyrrel’s friends, 
found ourselves in the neighborhood not long after George’s de- 
parture. We had all been invited to see the launch of Mr. Tyrrel’s 
new yacht from the builder’s yard at Wivenhoe, in Essex. When 
the launch was over, the rest of the company returned to Colchester 
to dine. Miss Garth and I contrived to get into the same carriage 
together, with nobody but my two little pupils for our companions. 
We gave the coachman his orders, and drove round by St. Crux. 
The moment Miss Garth mentioned her name we were let in, and 
shown all over the house. I don’t know how to describe it to you. 
it is the most bewildering place I ever saw in my life — ” 

“ Don’t attempt to describe it, Norah. Go on with your story in- 
stead.” 

“ Very well. My story takes me straight into one of the rooms at St. 
Crux — a room about as long as your street here — so dreary, so dirty, 
and so dreadfully cold that I shiver at the bare recollection of it. 
Miss Garth was for getting out of it again as speedily as possible, 
and so was I. But the housekeeper declined to let us off without 
first looking at a singular piece of furniture, the only piece of fur- 
niture in the comfortless place. She called it a tripod, I think. 
(There is nothing to be alarmed at, Magdalen ; I assure you there is 
nothing to be alarmed at !) At any rate, it was a strange three- 
legged thing, which supported a great panful of charcoal ashes at 
the top. It was considered by all good judges (the housekeeper 
told us) a wonderful piece of chasing in metal ; and she especially 
pointed out the beauty of some scroll-work running round the inside 
of the pan, with Latin mottoes on it, signifying — I forget what. I 
felt not the slightest interest in the thing myself, but I looked close 
at the scroll-work to satisfy the housekeeper. To confess the truth, 
she was rather tiresome with her mechanically learned lecture on 
fine metal- work ; and, while she was talking, I found myself idly 
stirring the soft feathery white ashes backward and forward with 
my hand, pretending to listen, with my mind a hundred miles away 
from her. I don’t know how long or how short a time I had been 
playing with the ashes, when my fingers suddenly encountered a 
piece of crumpled paper hidden deep among them. When I brought 
it to the surface, it proved to be a letter — a long letter full of cramp- 
ed, close writing. — You have anticipated my story, Magdalen, before 
I can end it ! You know as well as I do that the letter which my 
idle fingers found was the Secret Trust. Hold out your hand, my 
dear. I have got George’s permission to show it to you, and there 
it is !” 

She put the Trust into her sister’s hand. Magdalen took it from 


NO NAME. 


605 


her mechanically. “You !” she said, looking at her sister with the 
remembrance of all that she had vainly ventured, of all that she had 
vainly suffered, at St. Crux — “ you have found it !” 

“ Yes,” said Norah, gayly ; “ the Trust has proved no exception to 
the general perversity of all lost things. Look for them, and they 
remain invisible. Leave them alone, and they reveal themselves ! 
You and your lawyer, Magdalen, were botli justified in supposing 
that your interest in this discovery was an interest of no common 
kind. I spare you all our consultations after I had produced the 
crumpled paper from the ashes. It ended in George’s lawyer being 
written to, and in George himself being recalled from the Continent. 
Miss Garth and I both saw him immediately on his return. He did 
what neither of us could do— he solved the mystery of the Trust 
being hidden in the charcoal ashes. Admiral Bartram, you must 
know, was all his life subject to fits of somnambulism. He had been 
found walking in his sleep not long before his death — just at the 
time, too, when he was sadly troubled in his mind on the subject 
of that very letter in your hand. George’s idea is that he must have 
fancied he was doing in his sleep what he would have died rather 
than do in his waking moments — destroying the Trust. The fire 
had been lit in the pan not long before, and he no doubt saw it still 
burning in his dream. This was George’s explanation of the strange 
position of the letter when I discovered it. The question of what 
was to be done with the letter itself came next, and was no easy 
question for a woman to understand. But I determined to master 
it, and I did master it, because it related to you.” 

“ Let me try to master it, in my turn,” said Magdalen. “ I have 
a particular reason for wishing to know as much about this letter as 
you know yourself. What has it done for others, and what is it to 
do for me ?” 

“ My dear Magdalen, how strangely you look at it ! how strange- 
ly you talk of it ! Worthless as it may appear, that morsel of paper 
gives you a fortune.” 

“ Is my only claim to the fortune the claim which this letter gives 
me ?” 

“Yes ; the letter is your only claim. Shall I try if I can explain 
it in two words ? Taken by itself, the letter might, in the lawyer’s 
opinion, have been made a matter for dispute, though I am sure 
George would have sanctioned no proceeding of that sort. Taken, 
however, with the postscript which Admiral Bartram attached to it 
(you will see the lines if you look under the signature on the third 
page), it becomes legally binding, as well as morally binding, on the 
admiral’s representatives. I have exhausted my small stock of legal 
words, and must go on in my own language instead of in the law- 
yer’s. The end of the thing was simply this. All the money went 


606 


NO NAME. 


back to Mr. Noel Yanstone’s estate (another legal word ! my vocab- 
ulary is richer than I thought), for one plain reason — that it had 
not been employed as Mr. Noel Vanstone directed. If Mrs. Girdle- 
stone had lived, or if George had married me a few months earlier, 
results would have been just the other way. As it is, half the money 
has been already divided between Mr. Noel Vanstone’s next of kin; 
which means, translated into plain English, my husband, and his 
poor bedridden sister — who took the money formally, one day, to 
satisfy the lawyer, and who gave it back again generously, the next, 
to satisfy herself. So much for one half of this legacy. The other 
half, my dear, is all yours. How strangely events happen, Magda- 
len ! It is only two years since you and I were left disinherited or- 
phans — and we are sharing our poor father’s fortune between us, 
after all !” 

“Wait a little, Norah. Our shares come to us in very different 
ways.” 

“Do they? Mine comes to me by my husband. Yours comes 
to you — ” She stopped confusedly, and changed color. “ Forgive 
me, my own love !” she said, putting Magdalen’s hand to her lips. 
“I have forgotten what I ought to have remembered. I have 
thoughtlessly distressed you !” 

“ No !” said Magdalen ; “ you have encouraged me.” 

“ Encouraged you ?” 

“ You shall see.” 

With those words, she rose quietly from the sofa, and walked to 
the open window. Before Norah could follow her, she had torn the 
Trust to pieces, and had cast the fragments into the street. 

She came back to the sofa, and laid her head, with a deep sigh 
of relief, on Norah’s bosom. “ I will owe nothing to my past life,” 
she said. “ I have parted with it as I have parted with those torn 
morsels of paper. All the thoughts and all the hopes belonging to 
it are put away from me forever !” 

“ Magdalen, my husband will never allow you ! I will never al- 
low you myself—” 

“ Hush ! hush ! What your husband thinks right, Norah, you 
and I will think right too. I will take from you what I would 
never have taken if that letter had given it to me. The end I 
dreamed of has come. Nothing is changed but the position I once 
thought we might hold toward each other. Better as it is, my love 
— far, far better as it is !” 

So she made the last sacrifice of the old perversity and the old 
pride. So she entered on the new and nobler life. 

***** * * 

A month had passed. The autumn sunshine was bright even in 
the murky streets, and the clocks in the neighborhood were just 


NO NAME. 607 

striking two, as Magdalen returned alone to the house in Aaron’s 
Buildings. 

“ Is he waiting for me ?” she asked, anxiously, when the landlady 
let her in. 

He was waiting in the front room. Magdalen stole up the stairs 
and knocked at the door. He called to her carelessly and absently 
to come in, plainly thinking that it was only the servant who ap- 
plied for permission to enter the room. 

“You hardly expected me so soon?” she said, speaking on the 
threshold, and pausing there to enjoy his surprise as he started to 
his feet and looked at her. 

The only traces of illness still visible in her face left a delicacy in 
its outline which added refinement to her beauty. She was simply 
dressed in muslin. Her plain straw bonnet had no other ornament 
than the white ribbon with which it was sparingly trimmed. She 
had never looked lovelier in her best days than she looked now, as 
she advanced to the table at which he had been sitting, with a lit- 
tle basket of flowers that she had brought with her from the coun- 
try, and offered him her hand. 

He looked anxious and careworn when she saw him closer. She 
interrupted his first inquiries and congratulations to ask if he had 
remained in London since they had parted — if he had not even gone 
away for a few days only, to see his friends in Suffolk ? No ; he 
had been in London ever since. He never told her that the pretty 
parsonage house in Suffolk wanted all those associations with her- 
self in which the poor four walls at Aaron’s Buildings were so rich. 
He only said he had been in London ever since. 

“ I wonder,” she asked, looking him attentively in the face, “ if 
you are as happy to see me again as I am to see you ?” 

“ Perhaps I am even happier, in my different way,” he answered, 
with a smile. 

She took off her bonnet and scarf, and seated herself once more ih , 
her own arm-chair. “ I suppose this street is very ugly,” she said ; 

“ and I am sure nobody can deny that the house is very small. And 
yet — and yet it feels like coming home again. Sit there where you 
used to sit ; tell me about yourself. I want to know all that you 
have done, all that you have thought even, while I have been away.” 
She tried to resume the endless succession of questions by means 
of which she was accustomed to lure him into speaking of himself. 
But she put them far less spontaneously, far less adroitly, than 
usual. Her one all-absorbing anxiety in entering that room was not 
an anxiety to be trifled with. After a quarter of an hour wasted in 
constrained inquiries on one side, in reluctant replies on the other, 
she ventured near the dangerous subject at last. 

“Have you received the letters I wrote to you from the sea- 


608 


NO NAME. 


side?” she asked, suddenly looking away from him for the first 
time. 

“ Yes,” he said ; “ all.” 

“ Have you read them ?” 

“ Every one of them — many times over.” 

Her heart beat as if it would suffocate her. She had kept her 
promise bravely. The whole story of her life, from the time of the i 
home-wreck at Combe-Raven to the time when she had destroyed 
the Secret Trust in her sister’s presence, had been all laid before 
him. Nothing that she had done, nothing even that she had 
thought, had been concealed from his knowledge. As he would 
have kept a pledged engagement with her, so she had kept her 
pledged engagement with him. She had not faltered in the resolu- 
tion to do this ; and now she faltered over the one decisive question 1 
which she had come there to ask. Strong as the desire in her was 
to know if she had lost or won him, the fear of knowing was at 
that moment stronger still. She waited and trembled ; she waited, 
and said no more. 

“ May I speak to you about your letters ?” he asked. “ May I 
tell you — ?” 

If she had looked at him as he said those few words, she would 
have seen what he thought of her in his face. She would have seen, 
innocent as he was in this world’s knowledge, that he knew the 
priceless value, the all-ennobling virtue, of a woman who speaks the 
truth. But she had no courage to look at him — no courage to raise 
her eyes from her lap. 

“ Not just yet,” she said, faintly. “ Not quite so soon after we 
have met again.” 

She rose hurriedly from her chair, and walked to the window, 
turned back again into the room, and approached the table, close to 
where he was sitting. The writing materials scattered near him of- 
fered her a pretext for changing the subject, and she seized on it di- 
rectly. “ Were you writing a letter,” she asked, “ when I came in ?” 

“ I was thinking about it,” he replied. “ It was not a letter to 
be written without thinking first.” He rose as he answered her to 
gather the writing materials together and put them away. 

“ Why should I interrupt you ?” she said. “ Why not let me try 
whether I can’t help you instead ? Is it a secret ?” 

“ No, not a secret.” 

He hesitated as he answered her. She instantly guessed the truth. 

“ Is it about your ship ?” 

He little knew how she had been thinking in her absence from 
him of the business which he believed that he had concealed fro/* 
her. He little knew that she had learned already to be jealous ol 
his ship. 


NO NAME. 


609 

“ Do they want you to return to your old life ?” she went on. 
“ Do they want you to go back to the sea ? Must you say Yes or 
No at once ?” 

44 At once.” 

44 If I had not come in when I did, would you have said Yes ?” 

She unconsciously laid her hand on his arm, forgetting all infe- 
I rior considerations in her breathless anxiety to hear his next words. 
The confession of his love was within a hair-breadth of escaping 
him ; but he checked the utterance of it even yet. 44 I don’t care 
i for myself,” he thought ; 44 but how can I be certain of not distress- 
ing her . ? ” 

44 Would you have said Yes ?” she repeated. 

44 1 was doubting,” he answered — 44 1 was doubting between Yes 
and No.” 

Her hand tightened on his arm ; a sudden trembling seized her 
in every limb, she could bear it no longer. All her heart went out 
to him in her next words : 

44 Were you doubting for my sake . ? ” 

44 Yes,” he said. 44 Take my confession in return for yours — I was 
doubting for your sake.” 

She said no more; she only looked at him. In that look the 
truth reached him at last. The next instant she was folded in his 
arms, and was shedding delicious tears of joy, with her face hidden 
on his bosom. 

44 Do I deserve my happiness ?” she murmured, asking the one 
question at last. 44 Oh, I know how the poor narrow people who 
have never felt and never suffered would answer me if I asked them 
what I ask you. If they knew my story, they would forget all the 
provocation, and only remember the offense ; they would fasten on 
my sin, and pass all my suffering by. But you are not one of them ! 
Tell me if you have any shadow of a misgiving ! Tell me if you 
doubt that the one dear object of all my life to come is to live wor- 
thy of you ! I asked you to wait and see me ; I asked you, if there 
was any hard truth to be told, to tell it me here with your own lips r 
Tell it, my love, my husband ! — tell it me now !” 

She looked up, still clinging to him as she clung to the hope of 
her better life to come. 

44 Tell me the truth !” she repeated. 

44 With my own lips.” 

44 Yes !” she answered, eagerly. 44 Say what you think of me with 
your own lips.” 

He stooped and kissed her. 


THE END. 







1 










































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